Off-White

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss's gaze shifted from side to side, evaluating the different stands in this less crowded area. Weiss couldn't really find much motivation to eat, or train, but she knew she couldn't let her apathy stop her. Even if her stomach felt numb and her feet felt like they pushed through molasses with every step, she didn't really have a choice. She needed to win that tournament. So instead of what she wanted to do - find a corner and stay there - she pushed towards a nearby stand selling some sort of meat on a stick. It wasn't the most nutritious thing Weiss had ever seen, but it was the first thing she'd seen that wasn't covered in syrup or batter all day. "better than nothing. which is exactly what I've eaten before now."
A middle-aged man stared back at her, a dark-skinned man with more than a little paunch, and a rather well-tended white beard. "Looking to get a kebab?" the man said with a smile.
"Um, yes. Um..." Weiss stammered, realizing she didn't have money. What was that thing the mask salesman had said before.
"Alright. I just need a bit of omnilium in return." The man said with a calm smile.
Weiss realized she didn't know how to give him any - or if she had any to spare. "Well... I don't really... Know how." Weiss said with a bit of shyness. She wasn't really used to admitting any lack of knowledge, but in this new place she felt more like an infant than anything.
The man studied her face for a bit. "new prime, yeah? I don't know what misery Omni plucked you out of, but it shows on your face."
"It's none of your business!" Weiss growled, before taking a slight breath.
The man's face fell a bit, as his tone changed from jovial to apologetic. "Yeah... You're right, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
Weiss took a deep breath. "...And I... Didn't mean to snap." she managed.
she felt something brush past her hand, and as she looked she realized the man had pushed one of his kebab's into her outstretched hand. "Here. You look like you could stand to eat. My wife would kill me if I let a nice young lady like yourself go hungry." The man said. "think of it as an apology for my rudeness."
Weiss looked at the kebab for a moment. Something dimly in her head registered this as the first good thing that had happened to her since she hit the omniverse.
Other than getting to hallucinate her teammate, she guessed.
"...Thank you. Umm..." Weiss breathed, thinking of what she needed to say next. "I need to ask you. About this place. About... What I am."
The man looked at her with a small amount of shock. “...Yeah. I guess I can explain that a little. but first - introductions. My name is Tom. And you are?”
“Weiss. Weiss Schnee.” she answered with a forced smile.
Tom nodded. “Good name. I’m a bit jealous, but now, onto yer question...
I’m guessing you already heard some of the basics from the grinnin’ guy, but to put it simply… The difference between you and us comes down to two things.” Tom explained. “The first is that any prime what dies comes back in three days.”
“three days!” Weiss thought to herself. Such a short amount of time was… Hardly a penalty at all. Weiss didn’t imagine that people’d revive quite so fast.
“Yeah, primes are basically immortal. Though there is a way to literally be banished to hell, so don’t get cocky about it.” Tom told her, concern in his eyes as he stated it.
“...Yeah.” Weiss managed to reply.
Tom paused for a moment, before continuing.
“The second thing is that you’re one of the few people that can process and use raw omnilium.”
Weiss quirked her eyebrow at that. ‘what’s that mean, exactly?”
Tom seemed to struggle with the words for a moment before continuing. “Well, to put it as simple as I can, you can absorb omnilium, manifest it, turn it into just about anything you can imagine, and use it to increase your own powers. You’re also one of the few beings here that can actually improve. It means a lot of us secondaries - people brought here by primes, that’s one of the ways you can use your omnilium - Don’t exactly take kindly to primes, mind you. You’re sort of the upper class.
Detested by people due to how she was brought into the world, regardless of any of her actions after appearing in it? Weiss definitely wasn’t tired of that song and dance.
God forbid anyone judge her on what she’d done with her life instead of how she came by it.
“...So how do I do that?” Weiss asked finally, more than a bit of impatience bleeding through.
“Just concentrate, mostly. it apparently comes natural to primes so long as they have a clear goal in mind.” Tom explained.
Weiss was surprised by how simple the whole idea behind this seemed to be. “So that’s all I have to do?”
Tom scratched his head. “well… you also have to concentrate on what it’s actually supposed to do. If you just focus on a dragon, you can bring in a really big dragon, but if you’re not thinking ‘bout how strong the dragon is, a mouse could bite it and it’d bring it down. you also need to have enough omnilium. If you don’t… It doesn’t really help you at all.”

Weiss thought about that. So she needed to think about what she wanted, and hope she had enough to get it. her eyes drifted down, towards Myrtenaster’s empty dust chambers. If she could get just one crystal ready, her chances in the tournament would skyrocket.
“...Alright. Is there… anything else?” Weiss asked, a foreign exhaustion already folding over her like a dense blanket. She knew she should have felt grateful to the man, maybe even a little happier with her chances in the tournament.
She couldn’t really manage to feel much other than “tired” though.
“No, that’s about it. Uhhh… Listen. You’re in the tournament, yeah?” Tom asked her.
“Yeah, like I said.”
The man smiled. “Listen… That kebab’ll probably do ya for now, but if you want real, honest food rather than the glorified candy they’re serving… come on by here in the morning. I’ll make you a proper meal.”
Weiss couldn’t imagine eating again that soon as she felt now. She could barely stomach the thought of the kebab she’d just bought. But she knew it was vital, so she managed a nod.
“Great. I’ll see you then!
“...See you.” Weiss managed weakly, before walking away. A good part of her realized she was being rude, but she just couldn’t manage to say another word.
Instead, she walked away, walking towards a grassy area just on the edge of the carnival area.
There, she could test out if she could make dust. She would eat. And then she’d finally answer the constant call for sleep her body cried out for.

[Weiss Schnee]

"Alright, Weiss, calm down, you just need to concentrate. This should be easy. Weiss thought to herself, as she sat down and concentrated.
Omnilium. The resource for everything in this world. Kind of like this universe's dust. Except in this universe ,you could absorb it, and it also worked as money, and...
Alright, maybe it was a bad comparison.
The question on Weiss's mind, though, was a simple one:
could she create dust out of this substance?

Weiss tried her best to picture exactly what she wanted. The same red crystal she'd loaded into her Myrtenaster many times before. She needed to be careful here - If she thought of it as too big or too small, it might pop out the wrong size for her weapon.
Or at least, that was her theory. She really didn't have a clue on exactly how to use this stupid omnilium thing.
She grasped onto the idea of it as she used it, thinking of her previous battles, her previous times using the fiery power of red dust. If she could at least get some fire dust, her chances at the coliseum would skyrocket, she knew.
As she pictured it, though, nothing happened.

"What did I do wrong?" she thought in a panic to herself. This was how the shopkeep explained it, right? had she forgotten something? She just had to concentrate on the thing, and then bring it out. That was it! Right? What was she-
"Oh, I probably have to think about it actually being made or something, right?" She asked herself. Talking to yourself was considered a sign of craziness, Weiss knew, but so was hallucinating your team leader. She'd started growing to accept the idea that there was something wrong with her. She'd certainly been through enough that it was justified.

Feeling a little foolish, she held out her left hand, and imagined the crystal again, visualizing the scarlet crystal appearing in her palm. "Come on..." She muttered, closing her eyes.
A faint scratching sensation filled her palm, and she opened her eyes to see what looked like a rainbow-colored bubble appear in front of her palms. The bubble looked indistinct, but Weiss instinctively knew that she'd done it correctly. She closed her eyes again, knowing that she couldn't lose concentration for too long(How, she couldn't guess.). Standing stock-still, she focused intently on the crystal for what felt like a couple minutes, the only noise nearby being the soft hum of the bubble of omnilium.

Finally, she felt a familiar object land softly in her hand, and she knew she'd done it.
Opening her eyes to the familiar sight of a pure red dust crystal, she immediately unsheathed Myrtenaster. She slid the crystal into Myrtenaster's casing with ease, the solidified dust a perfect fit for its slot. Weiss pointed her weapon forward, allowing the chambers to spin, before experimentally trying it out.
A soft, silver light was visible for a split second, as Weiss pointed her weapon forward, getting into a customary fighting stance. Alarmingly, her aura felt much less… solid than it had before. Had omni drained her of her aura as well?

“Calm down, Weiss. if he did it to you, that means he might have done it to everyone.” Weiss thought. Or hoped, at least. That stupid white-faced bastard seemed pretty happy to royally screw her over in every other way, so why not make her the weakest person in his little universe, too?
Weiss realized she was breathing a little too rapidly. She was panicking - that was a waste of energy. “Calm down. You need to test out just what it is you can do. Regardless of how you feel… the tournament’s still coming.”

Weiss concentrated, feeling her aura wrap around her. Lessened or not, it was comforting to still be able to feel her soul’s essence enveloping her. Her breathing slowed, and she guided her sword forward experimentally. The weight felt familiar, and the movement was simple.
It was training, though, so of course it was. There was no need to think about anything.
Weiss adjusted her footing, pulling her back foot slightly forward, before lunging, throwing one, then two, then seven quick strikes forward,each strike aimed to cripple or kill a human opponent. She focused her aura next, pulling it in, before disappearing in a blur of movement, clearing a dozen meters of space in less time than the blink of an eye. Twice more she pushed for that same burst of speed, and each time it worked just as expected. She was a lot more tired than she had been in her own world, but not to the point she couldn’t pull this off a few times in the tournament.

Weiss stopped in place for a moment, Myrtenaster spinning, before she pointed her blade forward, the runes on the blade glowing a bright red as the edges were covered in an aura of the same color. Weiss went to stab the blade into the ground, just like she had many times before -

A familiar red figure appeared in front of her, swinging a scythe as big as she was. “Gotcha!””

Weiss’s eyes widened as she tripped forward, just barely managing to keep herself from landing on her own weapon as she clumsily rolled forward. Weiss managed to deactivate the crystal before she fell flat on her face, and her prized rapier flew harmlessly through the grass.
“...Ruby?” Weiss asked aloud. She knew it wasn’t. She was hallucinating - again - but she couldn’t help trying.
That day in the emerald forest, when she’d been forced to work with Ruby, was definitely one of her clearer memories. She’d never really realized just how much her attitude had changed since then until she’d thought about it now. She’d been fairly neutral to Blake and Yang at first, but Ruby… She’d thought of the girl as nothing but an annoying child, a girl with a headstrong attitude and a lack of common sense.

She… wasn’t entirely proven wrong, but gradually, those quirks had become less and less irritating and more and more endearing.
And eventually she’d become an important part of Weiss’s life.
“...Well, the dust works.” Weiss mumbled to herself, dimly finding the energy to grab her sword again, sheathing it with a sigh. She hadn’t arranged for a place to sleep, and the idea of summoning a bedroll occurred to her, but she couldn’t find the energy to sit up that long, now. The grass felt comfortable enough, and Weiss finally relented to what her body had been craving for a while now, and she fell asleep on the cold grass.