With my socializing duties fulfilled, I could return to being the filthy recluse of an Atlesian that I was. My parents also returned to their normal duties - I saw Father less and less at home as he went to work, being both as a public figure that gave statements and speeches and presentations and public relations. All necessary busywork even before the part about conducting and leading an international arms manufacturing company.

Most children growing up might throw fits and tantrums to get parents to not go to work and stay home, with quite a point behind their attitude - being children and thus requiring nurturing. It would be extremely stressful for all involved, and worse if said family were billionaires who saw counted minutes more preciously than they counted currency.

I think it was fortunate that I was not a normal child. A grown man in a kid's body, and all. I saw the situation and left them alone, distracting myself with other things.

Like getting into the family business.

Unluckily - I wanted to breach the topic first! - daddy dearest beat me to the punch.

One pleasant evening at dinnertime, while we were eating mundane rich-people food and talked about mundane rich-people things, I noticed mother and father sharing the kind of look that was suspicious. Very suspicious.

I feared it was something embarassing - for Lord knows they wouldn't pass up the opportunity - but it turned out otherwise, for which I'm thankful.

"Alexander." Father began, cupping his hands to form a sphere and conceal his mouth in the hunch-over of having pondered and prepared for something for days, a mannerism he kept far from company meetings. "Your mother have been discussing how soon we would introduce you to the company."

Mom sat in her Pose of Disapproval, arms and legs both crossed and with the tilt to her head that said she - what else - didn't approve, but wouldn't stop it going through.

Dad clearly had thought this out ahead of time, but he still was pausing to collect his thoughts while I waited patiently for him to continue. "We thought to introduce you when you were a bit older, but at this point... you attend most of my meetings anyway, and have shown real potential in planning, staffing and roster-work- CEO skills!" he got himself together at Mom's sudden serenity which usually preceded a dope-slap. It was more shameful for him to be in that state rather than anything that followed - that was him going way ahead of what he'd planned again.

"So! We've decided to advance your introduction." He finished with a happy clap of his hands and a come-to-the-conclusion look. "Now, if you decide not to, we understand. We won't force you to do what you feel isn't right for you."

Unbidden came the memories of this same man making me wear Pumpkin Pete onesies. And Mum dressing me in girls' clothing. Shivers ran tingling down my spine.

"But... if you DO accept, then..." Father turned his head, eyes closed, and spread hands to the ceiling with elbows on the tabletop. "We can begin immediately."

"Your mother and I will train you, personally, in the art of business and arms dealing."

What lay upon me... now, I am a man of God. I know there's an essential truth in one's way of living. Dad once offered me the question to puzzle over; a man knows his road and walks it well - what does he have that you want?

I wasn't nearly blind enough to ignore the implications unspoken, right now, of... more than our family's history. It was the call, that made fingers twitch when we saw a workbench. That quiet pull that was usually accompanied by a change in barometer readouts, the deepening of the sheer scale of things when we saw a project in the works. That sense, where as soon as the idea of a weapon was floated, if we were playing to begin with, the mood just changed.

In these seconds of silence I mulled over it, considering not whether I should but instead what reason I had not to. The heritage of the Friedlich line...

I quietly nodded. "When can we begin?"

Pure surprise on their faces. They must certainly have been expecting a denial or an explanation. I knew better than to make them think I didn't understand the real scale of things here.

"You're taking this well." commented Mother, making a deliberate sip at her water.

All I could do was grimace - Dad was frozen in place, probably worrying anything he would do would wreck things at this juncture.

"Mother, this was going to happen sooner or later. I know my duty as Father's heir. I will do what is expected of me." These robotic- no. These sterile and sanitized lines were the type of things it was good to say in Atlas. Impersonal. Concise. Leaving no openings or possibility of misinterpetation. Belligerence endeared nobody, here. My parents were the model of decency, but still very much upper class. Mother had adapted well, I'm told. It was just the way things worked here. Expectations to be followed. No questions asked.

They tried to hide it with a touch more boisterousness and spontaneity than was quite acceptable in this high society, but there was no hiding the pleased stances, the set of their shoulders and the almost-smiles. This is how you stroke the ding-dongs of the upper class, it seems.

And on the subject of spontaneity, Father proceeded to make the chandelier rattle.

"Excellent!" All I could do was wince at his volume. "This calls for celebration! Dear- a bottle! The southwest Mistrali spiced? What do you say?"

Mother tutted and glared. "I don't think so mister. I need you sober for what we are going to do tonight!"

My face scrunched up. What, are they going to party? At this hour? But then, Dad's shit eating grin explained everything.

For fuck's sake, Mom.

In the next day and the days after that, my lessons in the art of business and arms-dealing began in earnest.

My parents had written down a routine for me. Mother would tutor me on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She taught me the more banal side of business - accounting and administration mainly for material too sensitive to pass off to a secretary, and staffing and management as well. It was the hardest to do, considering arithmetic was never my mojo, much to the amusement of my friends in my prior life. And for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, father would come in and teach me the age-old art of making, selling and distributing weapons. Sunday was for breaks and my parents were adamant that it would only be used for breaks.

Today was Saturday, and I found myself seated on a spare desk in father's study. He would tutor me there, both to get used to working in a room like it, and to listen in and observe when he had meetings.

The manufacturing and dealing side was done like any other normal business. Goods, market, demand, supply, logistics of getting product to the buyer, so on. The real head-scratching part - specifically, the part where most people got hangups or cold feet - was the fundamental fact that the business revolved around producing weapons for those who intended to use them. Weaponsmithing came with expectations and said expectations... put simply, in this profession black and white were bald-faced lies. The most practical way to put it was that sincerely good people, and likewise the truly evil, even combined were still vanishingly rare and far overshadowed by the vast majority of buyers who were mostly normal and doing what they needed to survive, or ensuring their own best interests. A conscientious arms manufacturer is a terrible arms manufacturer. These points which were finely discussed by daddy dearest and me.

"Father." I said, in the tone of questioning.

"Yes?"

"How does our company sell arms to other kingdoms?"

"Trade deals negotiated between legislators and lobbyists. You got to the foreign relations bit already?"

"No, not that, I'm just wondering. What are the steps taken between our guns being made and them being bought in other kingdoms?"

Dad took the moment to look up at me properly, in wonder of what the hell I was babbling about. This would normally be quite fine as five-year olds are wont to babble, but we were here under the pretense that I was far ahead of most children. Also presently I was reading through Inter-Kingdom Market Dynamics, A Primer by a Jezbelt Greenfarrow, and looking at the powerpoint presentations that Dad could crib from his meetings and print off - meaning nothing needing a security clearance - which helped me see how the principles detailed in the book played out in real life.

"Well, security is everything. And not just to cover our butts to say we made an effort like the idiots competing with me in Vacuo. To export anything at all you need an export license from the Council of Atlas. That's mostly just so all the hoops are jumped through. Which a good product will do so with ease!"

I almost bit my lip. It was a very nice opener, but there was too much still in the air. "How do we find buyers?"

"Hold your horses! I'm not done, not nearly." Dad smiled at me, in the worryless look of care and understanding. The window behind him showed a gentler tinge to the usual overcast - it was as close as we got to sunshine in this time of the year... admittedly with the enquinox right around the corner.

"First the Council of Atlas issues the export license if and only if your product's worth attaching to the name of our kingdom. Our family has been golden with that, ever since the Export Licensing Act was passed in your great-great-grandfather's day. Then because we export dust munitions along with our guns, we have the Volatile Goods sub-license. Then because our product explicitly includes firearms we have the Military Equipment sublicense, at which point we have our liasons to the Atlesian military forces shake up every point of the logistics chain just to make sure things go where they need to and nothing goes missing. Only THEN does it get sealed, loaded into secure containers - the companies designing them also have their own verification protocols - and then shipped away. Then once it arrives, the organizations of processing and security checking of the other kingdoms do their job. I can't order them to treat every gun like it's made of glass, but I can send inspectors along if I have due cause to. Just one container going missing is five hundred rifles or forty-four thousand bullets that we were paid for and didn't arrive. We have to ensure the buyer receives the goods they purchased!"

"Can't we send the product to them directly?"

"Not possible." Father's smile didn't go away as I gaped in shock, and he continued. "Multiple kingdoms' worth of distribution agencies is sadly a bit high for us to reach for."

"So how do we find buyers?" I was by no means ignoring the process Dad just laid out, I was just focusing on my original question.

"The open market! We live in a dangerous world, and that means there's plenty of demand. We make quality weapons and everything to service them, and price them for better value than our competitors. We publish and regularly update our catalogue over the Cross-Continental network, detailing inter-kingdom standardized item codes."

"So how do they get it? In the mail?" This confused me, but it was closer to the issue I wanted tackling.

"No," Dad paused to drink cooler water. "Reputable buyers and arms dealers bulk purchase stock from us, and distribute locally after that."

"What do they do to make sure the wrong kind of people don't get guns?"

"There's a lot covered just by 'wrong kind of people'. What do you mean, son?" Father asked me.

"What's done to make sure people who hurt others won't get guns to do that with?" I knew this old story. I just wanted to know Dad's take on it all.

Sadly, he stalled on me and faked being nonplussed. "There are standards in place, Alexander. Civilian dealers are required to provide an end-user certificate signatory to their Kingdom or locale's law enforcement. Militaries and militia are exempt from it, but the Council of Atlas are the ones who decide which groups are approved to buy."

"Why?"

"Sometimes to make sure there's no tomfoolery with our weapons, but primarily to make sure our guns won't be turned against us."

"How do bad people keep getting our guns, then?" Oh, I love this routine. I earnestly wanted to know and dear Dad fed me course after course of information. I had then started to get the feeling that he was enjoying shooting down all my questions as much as I was enjoying trying to find the one that would pierce his armour.

"Guns aren't bio-degradeable." At that simple quip, Dad sat up and leaned forward, resting his forearms flat against the table. The look on his face suggested he was mightily tickled by my precociousness, and stoking this flame just to see how far I would take this train of thought as truth after truth was revealed to me.

I love you, Dad.

"Quite frequently, when a militia group crushes bandits enroaching on their home they result in not only a mass of scavenged, outdated weapons that are far inferior in function to designs more recently produced - and thus better improved, incorporating modernization advances in the metallurgy and manufacturing, but also usually a good stockpile of munitions which would have been fed those guns. Cartridges, shells and rounds can usually be repurposed, but the weapons as worn out as they are at that point are usually good for not much more than scrap metal. Very rare that bandits and insurgents have well-maintained equipment, you know!" he concluded with pointing a finger, smiling and nodding his head, egging me on even with no malice.

"So what happens when the militia don't have the equipment to melt the guns?"

"They bury them, often, or if they have air shipments they sell them to salvagers who take them apart for any components still useful and melt down the rest to be recast into new guns!"

"But that makes bad guns with the metal fatigue doing stuff to the material!"

"That was the case for a long time, but not with modern methods! Gravity, Burn and Freeze Dust are incorporated into the material reconsolidation process. That's detailed in page one-oh-two." His comment was matched by a point at the Primer still in my hands.

"So what about new guns?" Back to my point. "What if a dealer buys a whole lot more than they really need and sell the excess to the bad people?"

"Dealers' assets are kept well accounted for." Father's joking air was gone, replaced by an angry scowl, with a matching menacing frown. It seemed that I hit one hell of a prickle. "A big portion of the reason we send company inspectors is to analyze and determine whether or not their stated capacity is actually in line with how much they're planning to buy. The contracts they sign permit us to turn their entire warehouse up and open every single container, no matter how small, in search of our goods unaccounted for."

"So is the Atlas Council's word actually a real guarantee?"

"That's the reason the process is the way that it is! Guaranteeing the security of the buyer and the user. The scrutiny borne in order to obtain the certificate is very rigorous." But there was discomfort in Father's voice, now, and I zeroed in on it.

"Is it all a facade? Will nothing really guarantee our guns don't go to evil people?"

I don't know exactly when there grew to be a steely glint in Father's eyes. I saw him sitting still with intent and potential energy, ready to throw himself into this hill to die on. But still, his silence told me his next words were plotted with care.

Gerard Friedlich sighed, having stood to leave his seat empty and his beloved son's trajectory of thought unadressed. His reflection made him curse up an unspoken storm when he caught sight of himself in the window. It was made worse by the sight of his son's angelic face, still rapt at attention.

The intrusive memories arose, again unbidden. They were accompanied by the icy twinge of shivers running down a back that worsened with his age. A similar situation had played out in this same room, many years ago.

A younger man had more than just yelled. The younger man stated in no uncertain terms that if being in this business meant handing weapons to murderers, then his conscience and basic decency dictated that he would have no part in it.

Alexander's grandfather had smacked Gerard for that. That his skull was spun right to his side before jerking back from the burly man's blow stung less than the sheer venom in the old man's sneer of disgust.

Gerard had fallen back, hitting his head on the sill three fingers' breadth from the side. The dent was still visible under the laminate and paint.

You would ruin everything our family has done? For CENTURIES? All in the name of moral self-indulgence?! You think you're the only one with a conscience! You think it is moral to put thousands of Atlesian citizens out of work! Is it moral to deny the Kingdom we serve a revenue of billions? And the agri-domes and heating stations - Atlas depends on them to survive! You think they run on MORALITY?

The old man's roar had made this window rattle, twenty-two years ago. And in his heart of hearts Gerard had known his father spoke the truth, as much as his honor spoke to him to ignore the heartless drivel, trying to make its word law.

"No. It is not." Gerard answered his son's question in the present day, with his mind a million miles away.

Then you understand our position. And your task. Get out of my house, and come back when you have a spine.

Gerard left that room a lesser man, young as he was. That was not the last time he and his father would have such a talk.

But that wasn't what needed to be done. Not here, and certainly not now. It seemed like Alexander was growing aware of the stark, bleak reality of things, if the truths which he spoke in assuming they had been fact could be taken as statement of intent. Frankness, not brutality, was what was needed here.

"Alexander..." Gerard began, before a hitch made him stop speaking. He took a moment to force it down. Deals with warlords and chieftains hadn't fazed him, but it seemed it was this that blew a hole in his guard.

"Dad." It seemed at some point his little boy had left his seat, and snuck as silent as a dormouse to his side, because Alex's arms suddenly wrapped around his waist and belly while his little chest whumped against the small of his father's back. The surprise made Gerard jolt and raise his arms, to which his son just tightened his grip.

"Your hands were shaking. Are you alright?"

Gerard became conscious of the fact. He took several deep breaths, purging his body and mind of the negativity, the fear and the anger brought about by those horrible memories. The processing of this was helped along greatly by the feel of the noodly arms of his son holding him tight.

He reached behind to ruffle his son's head, but Alex darted back to look up to him... and let Gerard see the drawn worry for him on Alex's face. The father settled for clapping a hand on the young one's shoulder to squeeze reassuringly.

"Alexander. As the inheritor of Friedlich Arms there are truths of the world you need to understand. Ignoring them is the onset of folly, and ruin."

"Either you deal in weapons, or you do not." Gerard continued, airing the filthy reality of their profession with every carefully measured word. "All efforts are made to control where our products end up. But at the end of the day, every countermeasure is not only something that can go wrong on its own, it's something that can be circumvented."

"Our weapons are the best produced in the world. Out of any other operation that is an exaggeration, but I have searched through every market, across every contractor and every manufacturer's technical handbook. No other manufactured weapons are as good as the product of our company." Gerard spoke with quiet pride.

"Specifically, our produced weapons are a necessity for mankind's continued survival on this world. If we withold production, or export, to any kingdom we put civilization and the whole world at risk. While we do take measures - extensive ones - to ensure the security of our operation and our interests, the moment a grenade, a rifle, even a microchip is assembled, shipped and handed to the buyer we are not responsible for how it is utilized, or where it goes. As soon as it's an asset in the hands of those who will use it..."

"Well. Hoping for the best doesn't do much. It would behoove our buyers to use it for the betterment, not detriment, of both our society and theirs, but it is the man on the line in the field who decides where he aims and when he pulls the trigger."

"The SDC say the same about their Dust." Alexander chipped in, perking up. "They say because Dust is crucial for everything, the means justify the end."

Gerard's answering scowl of real anger - at them, not his son - was fierce. "We're better than that."

Gerard took a moment, walking to the cooler and proceeding to fill a plastic cup with the most refreshing two sips of his life. Damn and blast, he was right to say they were better. It disgusted him when his company was compared with the miserly skulduggery done by Jacques. And yet, the similarities were canny.

The fact that Friedlich Arms treated its employees both human and faunus as better than rancid shit was a cold comfort.

"It is a bad business by simple definition. But it is crucial that we do not orient our priorities, our character and our viewpoints to match. You know, it is possible to make killing tools and still be a good person."

"Hey!" Alexander piped up, cutting the lecture neatly. "No being sad. That's a rule now. Clear?"

Gerard's laugh came up from the belly while he discarded the cup. "Well, your old man still has some life in him!"

"HA! You called yourself old!"

"How DARE YOU!" Gerard's rumble of mock anger grew to a shout when he lunged and lifted his fifty-pound son up and raised Alexander squealing up over his own head. The boy took the opportunity to spread his arms like a Bullhead's wings.

And then would intervene the third of them. "Gerard and Alexander Friedlich!" She pushed the door open to see two boys busy being not even remotely dignified. Little Alex was trying to grab at his father's beard from up above, apparently having forgotten that the older man shaved it off a week ago, while Gerard still had the boy hoisted at arms' length like a sack of potatoes, face smushed by his son's fingers while both of them blinked owlishly at the mother's direction.

"What on Remnant are you doing?" Gerard felt less danger when dodging bullets and blades from assassins than from the wrath of his wife right now.

Alex in his arms let him dodge the bullet. "We're wrestling! Wanna join?"

Alena sauntered leisurely in from the doorway, fingers massaging her temples as the door shut behind her, her face somewhat softer after Alex's remark.

"I leave you two alone for all of ten minutes and-" She could say no more, for little Alexander bucked something fierce, twisting out of Gerard's hold of him aloft by his little sides. The little boy certainly had his mother's reflexes, because he twisted in midair to land on all fours. Alexander then launched himself forward to cling tightly to his mother's waist. The boy turned to him and yelled "Quick Father! I got her! Attack her while she's trapped!"

"What-oh!" Gerard did not hesitate. He roared a battle cry and lunged at his wife, bringing them all down two the floor. The boy and overgrown boy then assaulted her with tickles, to her giggles and slowly-dying-out-protests.

While his beloved wife lost her dignity laughing like a hyena, in the back of his mind Gerard arrived at the understanding of his wife's unsaid words. It was still study time for Alex and he still had duties to attend to.

Time may be valuable, but as he watched his son laugh in childish delight and basked in his wife's peals of laughter, he figured they could finish their work later.

Simply, there were things in the world more valuable than work.

Later, however, when Alexander was all tuckered out and heading to dinner, he reconvened with his beloved.

"Were you listening?" He asked.

Alena nodded in quiet pride.

EDITED BY: Krasnogvardiech

A/N: When I said the fic was going to be advancing and heartwarming shit was going to be lessened, I lied. And I will not apologize.

On other fronts, I wonder how the Schnee family (minus Jacques) would react to something like that. I guess it would go like this.

Willow, Winter, Weiss: Why can't I have a husband/father/family like that.

Baby!Whitley: Gougogugegjh?