Origins of a Businesswoman

A/N:I wish I could say I wrote this as a tribute to Monty, but I just heard the news less than an hour ago. As someone who never met the man, I feel it'd be almost disrespectful to say I missed him. I won't disrespect his family's loss by saying I do. I will say that there's less talent in the world now, and that no one will ever quite be able to animate like him. RIP.

On a less serious note, I hope you enjoy the story. I feel like it's not my best work, but I tend to be rather bad at getting things started. Hopefully once I get the story going it'll be better.

By the time she was three years old, Weiss Schnee knew what she was going to do for the rest of her life. She spent every day for the next five years reading up on her career choice, watching all sorts of supplemental videos, and browsing every website she could find to learn everything there was to learn.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the Sailor Senshi were not only refusing to accept recruits at the time, but would not be accepting any for the foreseeable future, due to a lack of existence.

Therefore, the logical thing to do was to work towards her backup career choice. Luckily, this was nipped in the bud after only a month of planning when she asked her father for directions to Diagon Alley.

After triple checking to make sure that bounty hunters were a real thing, she set off to be exactly like her favorite blonde hunter. However, her plans were once again foiled when she tried to convince her mother to get her a suit of power armor for her ninth birthday. After having her mother sit her down and explain to her that, while bounty hunters do exist, they didn't tend to be like her personal favorite. Weiss decided that she wouldn't let this deter her, and went about learning to be a proper bounty hunter.

Of course, one of the presents she received that year threw her off that path by showing her a much different blond bounty hunter.

Next, she decided she wanted to become an adventurer. After the third shopping trip wherein Weiss refused to try on anything that wasn't green, her mother suggested they go on a series on girls-only camping trips.

As expected, two days in the woods with only her mother and Winter for company quickly made Weiss reconsider her career choice, instead deciding to pursue a career that would keep her as far away from nature as possible.

However, it was still a very big surprise to her father when she walked into his office during a meeting and asked him how she could be a businesswoman.

Naturally, as soon as his meeting was over (Weiss sitting in on the remainder to absorb all the knowledge she could) he began grooming her to take over the family business.

For the next few years, she was trained in everything from project supervision to advanced finance, with her father providing more specific lessons, such as how to spot embezzlement, how to keep a seedy business far from the public eye, and how to identify good and bad workers. After her twelfth birthday, she moved on to advanced classes, taught by a personal tutor hired by her father. Said tutor had also been her father's professor during his college days. Once even he had taught her all he knew, her father decided it was time for her to begin getting some practical experience in the workplace.

The day she turned sixteen, she began her internship at one of the Schnee Conglomerate's offshoot branch's main office. She only managed to work there for six months before one of her 'superiors' decided to offer her a promotion. A rather significant promotion. Naturally, he was quite surprised to learn that the girl he'd intended to groom as his protege was also the CEO's daughter.

The next place was much lower in the pecking order. It took her the better part of a year before they decided to shuffle her up the chain of command. The next place did the same within three months, despite being on an entirely different continent.

Her final posting found her at Winchester Plumbing, a business so far removed from the conglomerate that it took even her father three full days to figure out if he owned it or not.

Despite that, it took her less than a week to coerce, sweet-talk, and blackmail her way to the top of the company.

Upon hearing this, her father lapsed into one of his brief moments of self-reflection, and realized he was truly frightened by his daughter's potential. He knew that with the connections she already had at his office she could easily do the same to him, brushing aside any resistance he would muster with the careful touch of a true businesswoman.

He couldn't have been prouder of her. However, he didn't feel ready to retire. So, he decided to do what he should have done years ago; give his daughter a true position of command in his company. Granted, he'd have to find a place far enough from the main HQ to keep her at bay, but not far enough as to alert her to what he was doing.

He mulled over the issue for days before finding the answer in a report of recently acquired assets from the last merger. The distance was perfect. Granted, it was smaller than most of the businesses he'd placed her at, but that was to be expected for a first command post. He had his secretary begin making the arrangements.

On her eighteenth birthday, Weiss Schnee walked out of her father's office, drove to the nearest airport, and boarded a plane bound for the isle of Patch. She watched the HQ until it faded from sight with a smile on her face.

Finally, she was escaping her father's shadow.