5

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!" The man with dyed white hair screamed at me through the screen.

Winter was with me in the room, hidden behind the camera that was positioned on me, allowing me to watch both her and the screen with enraged Jacques and thus behind the screen shake.

Did this bring her bad memories?

"Exactly what it sounds like. You were left alone for too long, and rather than fly under notice. You blatantly gathered power and influence everywhere you could." My voice hardened as I looked deeply into Jacques's eyes.

"Did you truly think you could do anything just because you have a lien? Atlas doesn't need you, Jacques. Atlas needs SDC or another corporation or the kingdom's own dust mining department that will take SDCs place, but not you. No matter how mistakenly you believe you are necessary for Atlas's wellbeing, you are not."

My voice carried so much power that I found it surprising, but then, it was the James Ironwood speaking, or his memories that created for me exactly what person he was before the merger, and that memory was seething in anger at what Winter and I found in these last three months.

"YOU are making a mistake! The entire Council! It was me who brought Dust enough to choke Atlas on it! And you want to sacrifice all of it for these-these animals?! Winter! I know you are there and listening! How can you let something like this BY?!" Jacques seethed with bared teeth. How easily was his businessman mask shed away on the barest danger of losing his fortune...

Would I be the same if they tried to take my General or Headmaster position from me?

"Do not bring your daughter and my soldier into this, Jacques. It is solely your fault it came to this. How hard would it be actually to take care of your workers? It wasn't Winter's nor anybody other's fault that you chose to save lien on everything, even on your own people."

"You! You! Is this because of her?!" What?

I looked at Jacques's, and if I were for a while slower, I wouldn't notice the tiny smirk that flashed on his face.

"Is this because of Willow? Is that it? Did you finally snap?! Did you finally find the courage to try to take her? Well too late! And MY daughter in that room with you SHOULD remind you of it!" My hands balled into fists as veins popped on my forehead. I ignored Winter, who looked surprised, as my sole focus was on Jacques.

"Enough." I could see Jaquess and Winter flinch, and the way his eyes slightly widened, Jacques seemed to realize his blunder.

"The inspectors arrive at your mines the very next day. You will not try to hide anything, nor try to scoot it under the rug, by trying to silence your workers. If I hear that even one died from this time to tomorrow, then I myself will visit the Schnee mansion and take you for treason against the Atlas."

I closed the call, my body was stiff, and my heart seemed to almost hammer in the strength of thousands of strikes, as the anger I felt didn't seem to want to recede.

"G-General? Sir?" I heard Winter's voice, which seemed to snap me from this...

Anger.

"Yes, Specialist?" I finally said after a while, when I took deep breaths and relaxed my muscles.

Looking down on the armrest of my chair, I could see my right cybernetic hand imprinted itself into it.

I needed a new chair or to have it fixed or completely replaced...

Looking back at Winter, I could see what she wanted to ask and yet didn't find the courage to do so after all...

How could you ask your boss what his relationship with one of her parents was...

Sighing out, I let myself slump into a chair, not in any obvious way. This body was too trained to show any such disgraceful position.

"You wish to know what he meant, don't you?" I finally asked, and Winter nodded her head, making me look deeply into my memories, especially those with Willow in them, and I immediately wished to cringe but held myself from doing it.

"Willow... Your mother and I, we were... You can say dating in our school days." My words seemed to confirm what Winter thought, but they still managed to make her almost gape at me.

"No, I take it back. We weren't dating. It was more like me courting her and asking her to accept my invitation on a date and her playing hard to get. It was actually fun for both of us at that time." And it was the way she always hid that blush or giggled when I created another silly song for her...

These times were different for all of us. Ironwood then wasn't Ironwood of now. The loss of part of his body and life in the army changed me. The Ironwood before merge nor I couldn't longer imagine that he could do such silly youthful acts...

All these were behind us when we were still just children and teenagers...

Ironwood, of now, wouldn't give up without a fight when Jacques sneaked his way into our circle of friends and took Willow's attention from me, but then, at that time, I was heartbroken when I witnessed how she accepted the invitation on date from Jacques's from the first time he asked, where she always rejected mine...

Now that I looked into it, the way she looked at me when she accepted it, the way she looked at me in the latter days...

It was clear to me, and to even social more inept and more blunt Ironwood, that she wanted to make us jealous, to fight for her...

But then...

Nothing could ever go as planned, and with my inactivity, Willow just continued dating Jacques. When it changed from a ploy to make me jealous to where she truly fell to Jacques's lies, it is beyond me, but then...

There wasn't ever a need to think about it that hard. Willow chose her course of action, and my inactivity chose mine course of action...

Where we both suffered, albeit in a kind of different ways...

Even until now, Ironwood wasn't ever in any relationship...

There just wasn't the time or the person who could make him pursue her romantically...

And so, I told Winter of the past I shared with her mother, and it seemed that with each word, her face downfallen, but the glint in her eyes stayed the same...

I wondered what she thought right now.

Still, just how long Jacques hid that desire, the fact that he got Willow into my face, or was this just spur of the moment?

No matter, he now probably thought how I plotted revenge on him, and I would if I didn't have thousands of more important tasks than being petty...