SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Distress Call (New)

Distress Call

Rainbow's scroll buzzed.

It was one-thirty in the morning.

Rainbow Dash was not a morning person. She never had been, but with discipline and by virtue of polishing her boots and pressing her uniform the night before, she could dig deep and present herself for an early morning inspection with the appearance of a bright eye and a bushy tail.

Not a real tail, in her case, but you know.

But there was early morning inspection hours, and there was one-thirty in the morning.

Rainbow groaned groggily, wordless mumbling sounds emerging from her mouth as she blinked her eyes. It was dark in the dorm room; the only light was coming from her scroll as it vibrated on the desk on the other side of the room.

Rainbow rolled over and waited for it to stop.

It didn't.

"Rainbow Dash," Penny said, "I think someone's trying to call you."

She sounded irritatingly alert and awake, but of course Penny didn't need sleep, did she?

It occurred to Rainbow that she would need to find some way of faking it at Beacon. Or else tell her teammates, whoever they turned out to be, that she had absolute insomnia and simply could not sleep under any … no, that would kill you, wouldn't it? She'd have to tell them she had insomnia at night but that she napped during the day somewhere she wouldn't be found.

Or she could tell them the truth, if she trusted them and it was allowed.

Or she could throw Sunset off the cliff and take her place, because the only way Penny was going to break into Team SAPR was over Sunset's dead body.

Rainbow made a note to herself not to do much thinking at this time of the morning; the ideas she came up with were stupid.

The scroll kept buzzing, which wasn't making Rainbow's incipient headache any better. She felt groggy, her mouth was full of gunk, her eyes needed rubbing.

And who in Remnant was trying to call her at one-thirty in the morning? No one she knew. She hoped it was no one she knew. It better be no one she knew.

Unless Atlas was actually under attack and it was all hands on deck to repel boarders, then no one had any business calling her at this hour. And she knew it wasn't an attack because her scroll would have been blaring a siren.

Not to mention she would have heard the sirens outside.

It wasn't any of her friends either, since it wasn't using any of their ringtones. It wasn't anyone who had a custom ringtone set.

It was probably some Mistralian call centre trying to sell her something.

Or it could be that Gilda had forgotten the time difference and needed another favour.

"Rainbow Dash?" Penny asked.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm getting up; I'm going to answer it," Rainbow said. "Mind your head, Penny."

Rainbow rolled out of bed quite literally, landing on her feet with a thump. She rubbed her eyes with one hand as she staggered across the room, not bothering to switch on the lights as she picked up her scroll.

It was a voice only call. Rainbow was too tired to speculate on what that might mean.

She answered it.

"Rainbow Dash? Thank the gods, it took you long enough!"

"Leaf?" Rainbow said. "What…? Do you know what time—?"

"Rainbow Dash, I need your help," Leaf said, the words tumbling out of the scroll. "They took my scroll; I had to sneak into the foreman's office to call you, but there are patrols, and I don't know when someone will come."

"'Patrols'?" Rainbow repeated. "Who took your scroll, what—?"

"This place isn't what I thought it was," Leaf said. "It's not what they said it was, they took our scrolls, they took our clothes; there are people who have been here for years, and from what they say, they're the lucky ones. Rainbow, they mark us! It hasn't happened to me yet, but I've seen it on other people's bodies, on their faces; they … you have to come get me, please."

"I will," Rainbow promised. "Where are you?"

"I don't, um … let me see if I can find a—"

"What are you doing in here?" the voice that spoke over the line was gruff, male, and raised in anger.

"I was … looking for the bathroom, and I got lost."

"We'll see what the captain has to say about that; come on, you filthy animal."

"Let go of me!" Leaf cried. "Get your hands off—!"

The call went dead.

The dorm room, too, was silent.

Rainbow stood still, the scroll held in her hands for a minute, before she threw it down onto the desk and let out a wordless growling of frustration as she kicked the wall.

She had … she should have … she should never have let this happen! She knew that the SDC was up to no good, she knew about Adam, she knew what they did, and yet, she had let Leaf sign up to work for them anyway. She had seen what the SDC was capable of, she had heard from Cadance about the silencing of witnesses, and yet, she had let Leaf place herself in their power. She had told herself that … what? That they didn't have very many slaves? That not everyone who worked for them ended up with a brand on their face? That Leaf had signed a contract, so everything would be okay?

What an idiot. And now…

The memory of Adam's face, with those three letters seared into his flesh, rose to the forefront of her mind.

"Rainbow Dash," Penny murmured, "what's going on?"

Rainbow closed her eyes for a moment. Leaf's call had banished tiredness, though she would rather have been tired and not got the call.

"The Schnee Dust Company is … involved in some bad stuff, Penny," she said. "They … they're mistreating people, and it seems like Leaf is caught up in it."

"But we're going to rescue her right?" Penny asked. "I mean, you promised."

"I did," Rainbow agreed. "And I meant it. We … I didn't want to get you involved, but—"

"But I am involved," Penny said. "Because Leaf is a friend."

Rainbow smiled tightly, although she didn't know if Penny could see it with the lights off.

"No, I'm not asking you to sit this one out," she agreed. It was a lot harder to do when Penny was right there as the call. "No, we are going to go to work, we're going to find Leaf, and we're going to save her and everyone else who's in trouble alongside her. Because … because that's what we do: we save lives, we say nothing's gonna hurt you tonight."

Penny was silent for a moment. "So how do we find her?"

Rainbow thought about it for a moment. "We ask a friend on the inside."

---

Tap.

Tap.

The eyes of Weiss Schnee opened onto darkness. Complete darkness, thanks to the excellent quality of the curtains and the fact that it was … she checked the time on her scroll which sat by her bedside.

It was two-fifteen at night.

Well, technically, it was morning, she supposed, but it hardly felt right to describe it thus. It was dark out, it was an uncivil hour to be either up or out, it was night time.

She wondered why she had woken up at this time. For all that she was not too pleased to be home, that hasn't manifested itself in uneasy sleep or restless nights. Quite the opposite, in fact; she had slept more soundly since returning from Beacon than she had done before she left for Beacon.

She credited Beacon itself with that, or rather, the knowledge that it was waiting for her. She might be back here for a little while; she had somewhere to go. More than that, she had a path to walk, a path that led her out of isolation.

So why had she woken up? What had disturbed her rest?

Tap.

Ah, yes. That.

There was a sound, and it sounded as though it was coming from the bedroom window.

Tap.

Weiss sat up, raising her head off the nigh-incomparably soft pillow — whatever else might be said about this house, it could not be denied that the furnishings were first rate — and looked towards the window.

"Lights," she murmured to the darkness.

The lights came on, springing to life in all of their intensity.

Weiss squinted against the sudden brightness. "Brightness nought point four," she said, and the lights dimmed to a level which her unaccustomed eyes could better accommodate.

Tap.

What was that sound? A bird, tapping its beak against the glass. A very persistent one, if so.

Annoyingly persistent.

Weiss threw back the covers and got out of bed, her pale blue nightgown falling down below her knees to completely cover her as she walked towards the window. Weiss tugged idly at the lace collar around her neck before she threw back the curtains.

It was night, or at least it was that part of the morning early enough to be considered night, and being so, it was dark out, but with the curtains drawn, there was enough moonlight for Weiss to be able to see out across the spacious gardens of Schnee Manor.

Her grandfather had loved the gardens. He had created them for himself, and in his latter days, with his health infirm and his great expeditions behind him, he had busied himself with pottering about the grounds, tending to his hollyhocks.

Father didn't have time for the garden, and much of it had fallen into … not disrepair, exactly — the lawns and the hedges were well tended to — but they were only there to look well-tended, preferably from some distance away; there was no care or passion put into it. Not much colour either; the flowers had gone, too much effort to maintain.

Weiss's mother used part of the grounds for her own purposes; it was home to a menagerie of exotic creatures she had collected from all over Remnant. Some of them she had captured herself, others she had paid for; either way, she brought them here and put them in cages so that she might look at them from time to time and admire the colour and the thickness of their fur, the beauty of their shape, the sleekness of their form.

Weiss could not believe that the pleasure Mother got from her gazing was worth the misery endured by the creatures in their cages.

She knew what it was to be confined, and it was not pleasant.

Tap.

There was no bird in front of Weiss's window, tapping on the glass with its beak. Instead, someone was throwing pebbles up from below to strike said window. A small pile was developing upon the balcony.

Weiss opened the full length window and, stepping around the pebbles in her bare feet, stepped out onto the little balcony.

Blake and Rainbow Dash stood down in the garden below, accompanied by Penny Polendina, Rainbow Dash's — exuberant, if Weiss remembered her correctly — teammate. It looked like Rainbow was just about to throw another pebble at her.

Penny waved.

"What are you doing here?" Weiss hissed, her voice hushed so as not to wake her father. It was not likely they would, but if they did, then Weiss would not be returning to Beacon, and all three down below would be arrested for trespassing. "Do you know what time it is?"

Rainbow glanced at Blake and whispered something.

Blake shook her head.

Rainbow looked back at Weiss and put one hand to her ear — her human ear — miming not being able to hear her.

Weiss frowned and spoke a little louder, though not much. "What do you want at this time of night?"

Penny shook her head. Rainbow still had one hand at her ear.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Come up here!" she hissed, gesturing towards herself with one hand.

They might not have been able to hear her, but they got the message of her actions, at least. Weiss took a step back as Blake drew her sword from across her back.

The black sword transformed smoothly into a pistol, bound by a length of black ribbon to a hook. Hook and ribbon alike whirled in Blake's hand before she cast them off, flinging the hook upwards to catch the edge of Weiss' balcony rail. Blake leapt, running lightly up the wall, pulling herself up the ribbon until, with a final hop, she cleared the rail and landed nimbly on the balcony.

"Weiss," she said softly. "It feels a little late for 'good evening' and a little early for 'good morning,' doesn't it?"

"It feels a little early for any of this," murmured Weiss.

Blake smiled slightly, but made no reply.

Penny was the next one up, clearing the distance on a single jump which carried her up over the balcony with time and space enough for a showy backflip before she landed, a little too heavily for Weiss's liking, upon the balcony proper.

"Hello, Weiss Schnee!" Penny said in an enthusiastic stage whisper. "It's nice to meet you again!"

"I would say likewise under different circumstances," Weiss said softly. "Could you please keep your voice down?"

"Sorry."

Rainbow Dash also jumped, eschewing the jetpack that she was wearing — and a good thing too, considering the noise it probably made — and although she didn't jump as high as Penny, she jumped high enough to grab the balcony rail and pull herself the rest of the way.

"Your security sucks, by the way," Rainbow said. "Do you even have security?"

"Rainbow Dash," Blake murmured.

"It might be someone less well-intentioned than us, next time," Rainbow pointed out.

"There are supposed to be some androids patrolling the grounds," Weiss said. "Evidently, there aren't enough of them." She paused long enough to scowl. "But that isn't really the point, is it? The point is, although I certainly don't object to seeing you again, this is hardly the sort of hour at which one expects to receive visitors."

"We know," Blake said, "and we're sorry."

"But we need your help," Rainbow added.

Weiss's brow remained firmly furrowed. "Come inside," she whispered, turning away from them and walking into her bedroom, leaving the cool of the night air behind.

The others followed. Rainbow, the last one in, shut the window after her.

Weiss walked across the room to where a red dressing gown, trimmed with white fur, hung on a hook. She lifted it off the hook and draped it around herself.

As she was tying the sash around her waist, Weiss turned to face the others once again.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"A friend of ours," Rainbow said, "took a job with the SDC."

"But tonight, she called Rainbow Dash for help," Penny said. "She said that they'd taken her scroll and her clothes, and she had to sneak into someone's office to call! Then someone found her and dragged her away."

Weiss stared at them, silently for a moment. "They took her scroll?" she repeated. "Why would they…?" She trailed off. "You think that—?"

"We don't know," Blake said. "But it doesn't sound good, does it?"

"No," Weiss admitted. "No, it does not."

She thought about what she'd been told, about the branding, the mutilation. A part of her still didn't want to believe it. She didn't want to believe that the Schnee name, her grandfather's name, the name that he had made a byword not only for dust or wealth but also for probity in business, could have fallen so far into such disgrace.

She didn't want to believe that her father, cold though he was, cruel though he could be, was such a monster.

But, as Blake said, it did not sound good.

"What can I do?" she asked.

"We don't know where our friend is," Rainbow said. "We were hoping that you could help us access the records and find her."

"Access … you mean the Schnee Dust Company records?" asked Weiss.

"That is why we're here," Blake murmured.

"I…" Weiss trailed off for a moment.

They were talking about employment records, details of work placement, where someone was based, what job they were doing. She didn't have access to any of that, just because she was the heiress … she didn't work for the company yet. She could attempt to browbeat an employee into giving her the information, as she had done before when working with the VPD, but not at this time; all the offices would be closed.

"What makes you think that what you want to know exists on the records?" Weiss asked. "If this friend is being held against her will, then—"

"She signed a contract," Rainbow said. "I think there must be some part of this that's legit, a real job. Obviously, some of it isn't, but … the only other idea I have is to break into the office of the first job agency to find out the name of the second agency to break into their offices; I was hoping that this would be faster."

Weiss pursed her lips. "So if I mentioned waiting until morning—"

"Leaf is in trouble now," Rainbow said. "The longer we wait … I don't know what'll happen to her."

"Leaf," Weiss repeated softly. "Is that her name?"

"Yes," Penny said. "She only just got here."

"What a fine welcome to Atlas," Weiss muttered. She glanced at Blake. "Is this changing how you feel at all?"

"I always knew what this company was," Blake said quietly, "but I also know the company is not the kingdom."

"No, thank goodness," Weiss murmured. "You could ask Councillor Cadenza to subpoena the records you're looking for."

"Assuming they aren't destroyed," Rainbow said.

"Twilight then," Weiss suggested. "If she can—"

"So there's nothing that you can do?" Penny asked, sounding rather dispirited about it.

Weiss did not reply. In some ways, perhaps in most ways, there was nothing she could do. She simply didn’t have access, and everyone who could have given her the information they wanted was asleep. She could tell them, and it would be disappointing, but it would be true. They would have to find another way.

And there were other ways. Some of them were not without their drawbacks — going through public channels meant a risk that someone would catch wind of it and move their friend or delete her file if a file existed, and more surreptitious approaches had their own drawbacks, but there was no reason not to try them.

She could tell them that, and it would be true, but…

But they had come to her. They had come to her for help to fix a problem with the SDC. Her grandfather's company, her family name was being soiled by wickedness, and they had come to her to help them do something about it.

It felt wrong then, to simply turn them away, to apologise and spread her hands and say that there was nothing she could do. Even if there was nothing she could do, as a Schnee, she had a responsibility to try.

Else how could Blake trust that she really was the one to redeem the company and the name of Schnee?

"This … is a longshot," Weiss said. "But it's the only thing I can think of. Now follow me and be absolutely silent. If we're discovered … nobody make a sound, understand?"

They all nodded silently. Weiss waited a moment to speak until she realised that they had taken her instructions to begin immediately.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Just like that. Keep it up."

She led them out of her room and onto the corridor beyond. The lights were not completely extinguished here, but they were very dim, little lights that cast long shadows on the wall as the four of them emerged from what felt now like the relative security of Weiss's bedchamber.

Weiss was a Schnee, and as a Schnee, she had been taught and trained to maintain her posture at all times, even in battle; nevertheless, at this moment, Weiss found herself like to crouch down and slink like a thief.

She didn't of course; one had to keep one's dignity, and it would hardly have done her any good in any event, but … nevertheless, she felt the urge.

She led the three of them through the great corridors of the immense Manor. Rainbow and Penny seemed in awe of the sheer grandiose scale of the place, gawking like yokel tourists on their first trip into the big city, even as they followed in Weiss' footsteps. Blake seemed to be a little more sanguine about it, but a twitching of her feline ears betrayed a touch of nervousness.

Weiss couldn't blame her. She felt more than a touch of nervousness herself. If her father caught her—

Weiss was prevented from imagining the potential consequences of discovery by the sound of footsteps coming the other way down the corridor — from the direction of Father's study.

Weiss let out a gasp despite herself. Father was awake? He had been awake all this time, and now he was coming this way? Coming this way and about to catch her with three intruders in the house.

Weiss couldn't think. She couldn't plan, she couldn't look for an escape, there was … there was nothing. Shock and fear rooted her to the spot as the footsteps drew closer and closer, until Klein rounded the corner and came to a stop in front of them.

He stared at Weiss and her companions.

A smile spread out beneath his walrus moustache. His eyes turned bright blue as he winked at her.

And then he turned around and walked away.

Weiss let out the breath she hadn't realised she had been holding onto.

She remained where she was, and all the others too, until the sound of Klein's footsteps had died away; then and only then did she lead the others the test of the way to her father's study.

The door was unlocked, it opened at Weiss's touch, and she led them inside.

Compared with the oversized magnificence of the rest of the house, Father's study was rather ordinary in scale, being a little smaller than a Beacon dorm room. Behind the desk on the back wall hung a giant portrait of Father himself, from his younger days when his moustache was black — and rather thinner and more pencil-like than it was now — and his cheekbones were sharper, sat behind the desk. He actually looked rather dashing, like an old-fashioned movie star, a fact which almost excused the monstrous vanity of the thing and of its placement directly in view as one came through the door. The left-hand wall was completely covered with bookshelves, while a chess set, set up for a new game, sat upon a little table by the door.

This was where the SDC was run from. From this room, her father controlled the wealthiest conglomerate in Remnant. From this room, he wielded more power than any king of old or Councillor of today.

From this room, it seemed, he brutalised faunus and made them slaves in all but name.

Perhaps, at least, though Weiss yet hoped it was not so.

Weiss walked briskly — she had no desire to linger here — across the room and sat down behind Father's desk of polished walnut. Father's portrait looked down upon her, even as the others crowded around her.

Weiss opened up the terminal on the desk. Luckily, Father was still signed in to his account.

Of course, he had been away from the desk for so long that it required his password.

"Do you know the password?" asked Blake quietly.

"No," Weiss replied, equally softly. "That's why this was always a longshot."

She rested her fingertips lightly upon the desk. Could she guess the password? She had come here to try, but she didn't have unlimited attempts, two at most. At three tries, the account would lock, and Father would know that something had happened when he tried to start work to— in the morning.

What could it be? What could Father's password be?

Winter? Whitley? Weiss? No. No, that would imply that he cared about them, or ever had. Willow, her mother's name, was out for the same reason.

The password was as likely to be a random string of numbers and letters as the name of anyone in his family.

He didn't care about any of them. They were all just … means to an end for him.

"Is this your father, Weiss?" Penny asked.

Weiss glanced over her shoulder, to where Penny was looking at Father's portrait. "Yes, that's what he looked like when he was a young man."

"You know," Rainbow murmured, "your father is … a jerk, to put it mildly, but I can see why your mom married him. He was a handsome dude."

Weiss snorted. "He certainly wants people to think so." She stopped, her eyes widening.

"Could it be that simple?' Weiss whispered.

"Weiss?" Blake asked, putting one hand upon her shoulder.

Father didn't care about her. He didn't care about either of his daughters, or his son, or his wife.

But he cared very much about himself.

Weiss looked at the portrait once again. That was what Father had looked like on the day he had married Mother … and taken control of the Schnee Dust Company.

Weiss' fingers tapped upon the keys as she entered the day of her parents' wedding, the day that Jacques Gelé had become Jacques Schnee, richest man in Remnant, into the password.

Weiss held her breath and pressed enter.

The password screen disappeared, replaced by a desktop with files already open and everything spread out before her.

Weiss could not cry out in triumph, she could not laugh; all she could do was let out a little ragged gasp. "I did it."

"Yeah," Rainbow said, patting her on the back. "Yeah, you did. Good job, Weiss."

"My job isn't done yet," Weiss reminded the other girl. With a few clicks, she opened up the Human Resources directory, complete with a search function for names. "What's the full name?"

"Leaf Kelly."

Weiss typed in the name Leaf Kelly and pressed enter.

She was almost surprised there was a result, but there was: a file appeared on the screen, complete with a photograph of a squirrel faunus with numerous ear piercings.

"Is that her?" Weiss asked.

"Yes," Penny said. "Yes, that's Leaf."

"Okay," Weiss said. "According to this file, she's employed as a hauler at Ramshead. Yes, it would be somewhere like there."

"You know the place?" Rainbow asked.

"It was discovered by my grandfather, during his first expedition," Weiss explained. "It's in the interior, the central mountains. Grandfather mined the surface level dust, but although he was certain there was a lot more dust to be found below, he didn't pursue it "

"Doesn't sound like Nicholas Schnee," Blake observed.

"He didn't think it was worth it," Weiss said. "Between heavy grimm activity and the difficulties of reaching the dust … there were other, easier yields to chase."

"So we have a place where the mining is hard, the location is out of the way, and the grimm make mining even more dangerous than usual," Rainbow murmured. "Sounds like the kind of place to—"

"Use slave labour?" Blake suggested.

"Something like that," Rainbow grunted.

"For whatever it's worth, she's set up on the payroll," Weiss said. "Albeit with heavy garnishing. Almost none of her notional pay survives the deductions.”

"Hmm," Rainbow murmured. "Ramshead, huh? Thanks, Weiss. Thanks a whole lot."

"What will you do now?" Weiss asked as she shut down programs so that Father wouldn't know what she'd done.

"I'm going to wake up Cadance, tell her what's going on," Rainbow said. "Wait, no, first we're going to get out of your hair, then we're going to wake up Cadance. Leaf … I wish this hadn't happened to her, but she might just have given us the lead to blow this thing wide open."

Comments

[Lancerguy]

Well who could have seen that coming? I imagined it would be an "owe my soul to the company store" situation once the job was described by Leaf last chapter but I did not expect it to go south this fast. Now here's to hoping the Progressive Era has hit Atlas at some point in the past or else the fact that she willingly signed a contract is going to make this situation even tricker to deal with

[Snowdrifter]

What a !

[ButtonMash]

I can’t say I’m surprised, though MAN was that fast.

Needless to say, what comes next is going to make quite a show.

[Kiue Jin]

If I had to guess, I think I can predict the fallout from this.

From the information on the file for Leaf from the CEO's office, it appears that the fact that she is actually enslaved doesn't reach that high up (I'm mean, beyond the Company Store taking its pound of flesh). This suggests to me that if this situation is blown open (and by hell it will be), the best play that the SDC PR department could make is to scapegoat the staff at Ramshead... in fairness, it might not ever be that much of a lie. A few company inspectors are also going to be taking the fall because clearly they were in on the scheme and profiting from it to lie about the illegal practices and horrible conditions in their reports.

The company is almost certainly going to have to make a public show of investigating their other sites to make sure that this level of corruption isn't happening elsewhere, but otherwise the playbook is to hang the staff at Ramshead out to dry for committing crimes against humanity in the name of the SDC, falsifying their records and reports to cover up said crimes and paying off (and possibly killing) inspectors the company sent.

[Mister Morden]

Wow, they skipped the company store owning your soul to outright slavery. Good job SDC... Speed running your crimes against humanity bucket list!

Now Cadance gets an early morning wake up!

[Mastermind4892]

11469196
Classic denial and disavowment of a 'rogue element.' To claim that they had 'no knowledge' of such unscrupulous practices.

Which proves incompetence instead of guilt.

[Raul]

That was surprisingly fast.