Prologue
It was the baggage handler.
Nobody would ever link it to him. Nobody would ever know that the source of all that would happen...would be the fault of a baggage handler.
A Faunus, one of the low, mistreated workers that eked a living out of carrying baggage through the freezing terminals of Atlas' freezing nights had just finished unloading the latest batch when he overheard two fancy, well-dressed pilots talk to one another.
The next day there was going to be an emergency flight headed for Vacuo. Order of SDC President Jacques Schnee himself. So urgent, nobody had been alerted, and flights had to be moved to make it happen.
It was strange. It was bizarre.
It probably meant security would be low on that particular day, and if there was one thing that the baggage handler knew, was that this kind of good information would result in good Lien from his friends seeking to make a powerful statement against the tyranny of the SDC.
In his mind, he reckoned it would be some kind of regional director getting the short end of the stick. Perhaps they'd blow the plane up with a group of SDC enforcers meant to pacify a rebellion. Or maybe his friends in the White Fang would infiltrate and steal the people's identities, and then send their own sympathizers in a kind of secret Spruce Willis Agent-Like Movie to...well, to do something.
Thus, the Baggage Handler was to blame.
Nobody would ever know this, however.
Nobody would ever know that the events that would happen, the way they would span, would be the fault of one embittered faunus, making a call he shouldn't have made to people who weren't at all kind, seeking to make a powerful statement to a society that hated them.
That was how Wren Schnee died.
At least, death would have been a mercy compared to what truly happened.
I didn't know why life seemed keen on throwing me hard-curved balls designed to make my entire existence a set of disasters one after the other. What I did know was that I definitely didn't deserve this. I reckoned it was my father's fault, in some way. Perhaps he had willfully engineered it, but I didn't think he'd be so callous.
I mean, what kind of father turns a teenager's rebellion into a good excuse to kill someone?
I admit, when the pilots of the private jet had mentioned that there were unidentified flying objects, I had thought they meant stuff like Huntsmen jumping or floating a bit higher than normal, or some military jet of some kind privately escorting us.
Instead, we were hit.
Admittedly, I didn't think I was going to die.
Well, I actually was thinking that for the first few minutes, but then my heart practically exploded in my chest with the sheer belief that the pilots would, surely, attempt to crash-land somewhere viable. Then we began to spin out of control, and my breakfast left my mouth.
By the time the ground was coming up, I had started screaming and crying in equal amounts.
Then we crashed, and I felt the rumbling of the jet snap in half as my body snapped to the right and to the left.
I-I barely contemplated if I had broken my neck, but my fingers did indeed move. They twitched, but my body just decided to not collaborate. I should have stayed awake. Deep down, I knew that if I closed my eyes-I would not live.
But I couldn't keep them open.
It was on me.
Everything that happened after that.
Everything-It was on me, and my weakness of that moment.
I could have run. I could have died. I could have done a lot of things.
But I didn't, because I was weak.
It was not the Grimm that found my unconscious form first. They, at the very least, would have been kind enough to kill me on the spot.
It was the White Fang who did, and from that act alone...
...the lush jungles of Mistral would never be the same again.
AN: We're going on an adventure. It's going to be a beautiful adventure. Love. Friendship. Joy. Everything Nice. Get ready for the ride of your life. Also, this is an AU of A Heart of Ice and Coffee. And depending on whether you prefer the chicken to have come before the egg, or viceversa, this is also an AU of The Other Path. So, just as a head's up, we'll be exploring Mistral, Salem's Faction, aaaannnnnddddd...something else. But you'll see.
My muse cannot be stopped.
I am not sorry about that.
