SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Calliope's Confession (New)

Calliope’s Confession

There was screaming coming from down the hall.

Mother and Father were screaming at one another. They hadn’t done that in a while.

They hadn’t done that, that Weiss could recall, since her tenth birthday party. Father had arrived late; Weiss had been disappointed; Mother had been upset. What had started as an expression of her disappointment had turned into a screaming match in front of all the — increasingly embarrassed — guests, while Weiss huddled against the wall, crying, covering her ears with both hands trying to block out the sounds of them shouting at one another, while Winter cradled her younger sister in her arms.

It hadn’t been enough to block out the noise. It hadn’t been enough to stop her from hearing Father declare that he had only married Mother to get control of the Schnee Dust Company.

It was, perhaps, a little thing to some people, but to Weiss … there was always — and probably would always — be a part of her that somewhat resented the fact that those words — spoken without shame, out loud, and in front of witnesses — should not have damaged Jacques Schnee. He had just admitted that he had married for her money, and nobody cared. Nobody thought it worthy of comment, let alone of approbation. Perhaps they weren’t even surprised. Perhaps they had all known, and only Mother was shocked to discover it.

Perhaps that was simply the cost of doing business in Atlas.

It was, she was sure, a little thing; there were those for whom the price of doing business in Atlas was much higher than for either Weiss or her mother. But it irked her nonetheless.

In any event, there hadn’t been a lot of shouting in the Schnee manor after that. Mother had retired to her menagerie, and to the collection of expensive Mistralian vintage wines — the best wines in the world were Mistralian, or so they said; Weiss wondered idly if Pyrrha’s family was amongst the great landowning families who profited from her mother’s predilections — to which she was always adding but which never actually got any bigger. Father had been content to leave her to it, knowing that she could buy wine like it was water and exotic animals as though they were pet shop gerbils, and she still wouldn’t dent the monthly profits of the SDC.

Mother didn’t show herself much, not in Atlesian society, not in the house, not in the lives of her children. She might as well have been dead for as present as she was; she was little more than a ghost, an idea, a memory, someone talked of occasionally but never seen, someone who had once existed but who never had any influence upon the world they lived in.

Nobody seemed to care about that either. Weiss thought for a moment about those awful rumours that someone had tried to spread about Pyrrha — the rumours that were still being spread, even after Pyrrha had put her life on the line to scotch them; now, they were saying that Pyrrha and Cinder had arranged to fake a fight in order to give Pyrrha cover; Weiss wasn’t sure how many people believed that, but someone was definitely trying to make people believe it — and could not help but compare it to the lack of any such rumours surrounding her parents.

In her father’s case, the rumours could have even been true, or at least contained a kernel of truth, which was more than could be said about some rumours, but, again, nobody seemed to care.

They cared now.

There was a risk, of which Weiss was aware, that these thoughts might make her seem callous, self-centred, perhaps even bitter that the abuse of faunus labourers had attracted more attention than the plight of her own family. It was … well, maybe it was slightly the case, emotionally speaking at least, but she understood why it was the case.

This was … bigger than the Schnee family.

The screaming coming down the hall wasn’t the only sound, as Weiss sat against the wall in Whitley’s room. Her parents were screaming, and she was once more sat against the wall, her knees up in a most unladylike manner. This time there was no Winter to take her in her arms; rather, Weiss had one arm around Whitley’s shoulders, holding him against her side, his head resting on her shoulder as they both tried to pay attention to Weiss’ scroll over the sound of their parents’ yelling.

“The cost of shares in the Schnee Dust Company fell by a colossal nineteen percent today as law enforcement agents raided the company’s head offices here in Atlas in connection with the revelations of illegal working practices and abuse carried out at SDC facilities. So far, at least one member of the SDC board of directors has been arrested, but the authorities have said that the investigation is still ongoing.

“The Schnee Dust Company said in a statement that it was cooperating fully with the authorities.

“Fears of the collapse of the SDC has caused instability across the market; gilt yields have risen seven points off the back of concerns about the viability of the Atlesian economy without the SDC—”

“What do you think will happen?” Whitley asked.

“To who?” Weiss asked. “To us?”

“To all of us,” Whitley replied. “And to the company.”

Weiss squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The innocent have nothing to fear from the law.”

Whitley glanced up at her. “Don’t they?” he asked, in a voice that sounded inordinately sceptical.

“No,” Weiss declared. “And I know that, because I have worked with the Valish police.”

“Of course you have,” Whitley muttered. He paused for a moment. “What makes you think that Father is innocent?”

Weiss drew in a breath and then let it out. She breathed in and out once more before she said, “Father has his faults, as we both know, but I don’t believe that he would be guilty of something like this. Has he ever gone out of his way to hurt you?”

“No,” Whitley said.

“No,” Weiss agreed. “Me neither. Because Father … is not a cruel man, except casually. At least … I think that if he was deliberately cruel, we would see it more often. Feel it more often. What’s going on, what they found … feels too malicious.”

“So Father just didn’t know that it was happening?”

“It’s not ideal,” Weiss murmured, “but it’s not something that he can be punished for. I’m more worried about the reputation of the company. Regardless of who knew what and who was responsible and who wasn’t, this happened at an SDC facility, maybe more than one. The company, the company that our grandfather built, will be forever associated with this. Forever tainted with this. Perhaps not forever, but it will take years, at least, to live this down. Our name will be stained with this, even though Father didn’t know, even though I’m sure he’ll suffer no legal repercussions, nevertheless, this will be what people think of when they hear the name Schnee.”

For now, at least. For some time to come, no doubt. But in time, when they hear the name Schnee, they’ll think of my accomplishments, of all that I have done and all those I have saved and served and the huntress that I have become.

Watch me, Grandfather; I shall glorify our name once more.

Whitley snorted. “You would care about something like that, my big sister with her head in the clouds.”

Weiss raised one eyebrow. “Some might say that it’s not a bad thing to have one’s head in the clouds, up here in Atlas.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” Weiss said. “I don’t.”

“Just that you would care about the Schnee name and the damage done to it.”

“It’s our name,” Weiss reminded him. “Don’t you care about it?”

“It’s a name,” Whitley said. “It doesn’t mean anything except money, and ruthless acquisition of the same.”

“That’s not true!” Weiss insisted. “The Schnee name stands for courage and hard work.”

“Once, maybe,” Whitley replied. He paused for a moment. “What if it doesn’t work out the way you think it will? What if Father isn’t innocent, or what if he is innocent but they blame him anyway? What if … what if it all comes tumbling down?”

Weiss hugged him a little tighter. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “No matter what happens, it’ll be okay.”

“It will for you,” Whitley said sharply. “You’re leaving.”

Weiss’ lips tightened. That was … unfortunately true. Not unfortunately in the sense that she didn’t want to leave, but unfortunate in the sense that she couldn’t deny what Whitley had said. She was — she would be — leaving, returning to Beacon for the Vytal Festival, and then for another year.

That was what she wanted, but at the same time, it would also involve leaving Whitley. It would always have involved leaving Whitley, but … but if, like he said, it all came falling down, then she would be leaving Whitley with … with what?

No father, no mother really, no Klein — he could hardly be expected to stay on if the family was thrown onto the crust of humility — no house, no wealth, no company. No … nothing. Winter would be fine, she had her own career in the military, and General Ironwood did not seem the sort of man to hold the crimes of her family against her; Weiss had Beacon, her team, the life of a huntress ahead of her, but Whitley…

“What if … what if I didn’t go?” she asked.

Whitley blinked. “What do you mean?”

“If … if it comes to it,” Weiss said. “If Father is implicated, or if things start falling apart then … then I won’t go back to Beacon and leave you to face all of this.”

Flash, she was sure, would understand. With so many younger siblings, she felt reasonably sure that Russel would understand too, and probably Cardin. And if they didn’t understand, well, then … that was too bad. It wasn’t her first choice, by any means, but what kind of huntress would she be if she turned her back on her own family when they were in need?

“I’ll stay,” she said, “and … take care of you.”

Whitley stared at her for a moment. “You … you’ll take care of me.”

“Yes,” Weiss said. “I will.”

Whitley frowned with one eyebrow while lifting the other. “How?” he asked.

Weiss’ mouth opened, but no sound emerged, because she hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. “Well … I suppose I could always … get a job. Isn’t that what people do? I could become … a waitress or something.”

“You’re going to become a waitress?”

“Or something!”

Whitley snorted. “I can’t see it.”

“Oh, really?” Weiss replied. “Well, if the idea of me providing for us both is so ridiculous, perhaps I should leave you to fend for yourself.” She chuckled. “Except I wouldn’t do that. I would never do that.”

“'Never'?” Whitley asked.

Weiss hesitated for a moment. “Whitley … if anything happens, if anything goes wrong … you can always call me or Winter, you know that, right?”

Whitley was silent for a while, before he said, “But you think that it won’t come to that?”

“No,” Weiss said. “I’m sure it won’t. I’m sure … everything won’t be fine, everything won’t go back just the way it was, but … it’ll be okay. I’m positive that it will be okay.”

---

From the other side of the one-way mirror, invisible to the prisoner on the other side, Blake watched Calliope Ferny.

She did not look like a monster. But then, few monsters ever did, certainly not before you got to know them.

And yet, she was a monster, Blake was absolutely and utterly convinced of that.

How could the mother of monsters not be one herself?

Adam.

…the engagement of Miss Blake Belladonna and Mister Adam Taurus…

…far from unexpected…

…with grim determination worked his way up to the top.

Her Adam, Remnant’s Adam, could not have had the exact same life that his Equestrian counterpart had possessed, even with the best will in the world: there was no Belladonna Corporation in Remnant, Blake wasn’t a society beauty making her debut; and no faunus, however hard working and determined, would find it so easy to climb from the bottom rung of the ladder to the upmost. At least, Blake thought with a glance towards Rainbow Dash, and to Cadance beyond her, not without friends in high places to help the climb.

And yet, Adam could have been more than he became, the difference in the lives of the two, the greater success of the Equestrian Adam, surely, they were proof of that. He could have been more, he could have been somebody … somebody like the person Blake had thought he was, or perhaps even better still.

He might not have been as successful as his pony counterpart, but he could have been loving, he could have been kind, he could have been…

He could have been someone that Blake could love.

And they could have been happy, even without being the darlings of the Manehatten social scene.

But it was not to be, and it was not to be because of Calliope Ferny, sitting in that room, and those like her.

Because it had not been in Adam Taurus to be happy. Such an emotion was not left in him. Joy had not been in Adam, not ever while Blake had known him. The most he had ever exhibited in that regard was a certain grim, sardonic humour. He did not laugh loudly; he did not smile delightedly; not even a great victory could rouse him to more than a smirk. He could be charismatic, intensely so, and his commitment to the cause was undeniable, but … he could not be happy, and so, he could neither make Blake happy nor be made happy by her.

There was too much anger in him. Too much hatred, too much pain.

And Blake thought that pain had started when he had been branded on the face like property.

As she watched Calliope through the one-way glass, Blake’s hands curled into fists.

“Hey, Blake,” Rainbow’s words were soft, and her hand on Blake’s shoulder was gentle. “You okay?”

Blake turned her head to look at her. “I … no,” she admitted. “No, I don’t think I am. I … was just thinking about Adam.”

Rainbow frowned. “Of course,” she murmured.

“I was thinking about his other self,” Blake said quietly.

Rainbow glanced at Cadance, who was a few feet away, talking on her scroll. Rainbow kept her own voice low as she said, “You mean the pony Adam.”

Blake nodded. “I was thinking … about the kind of life that Adam might have had if … I don’t know, perhaps I’m reading too much into it.”

“Why, because he was always violent, always ruthless; we know that isn’t true,” Rainbow said. “And even if we hadn’t gone to Equestria to prove it, I … I don’t think that we’re born certain to turn out the way we do. Otherwise … we’re made by the things that we see, the things that we do … and by the people that we meet, most of all. I wasn’t so different from Gilda growing up. Heck, I probably wasn’t that much different from Adam when he was a kid. But I met Twilight and Rarity and Pinkie, Fluttershy, Applejack, the General … they made me who I am today; they still do, because I carry a piece of all of them inside of me, always. I met them, and so I turned out like me, with a lot of help from them. Adam … Adam ran into that. And the rest is history.”

“Not quite,” Blake murmured. “He ran into me as well.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Rainbow said.

“Because after a certain point, people stop being changed?” Blake asked. “They become fully formed?”

“Some people harden faster than others, if only because the oven is hotter,” Rainbow said. “Just because Adam didn’t spring out of the ground just like he eventually ended up doesn’t mean that you have to kick yourself for not changing him into something better. Just because people can change doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t mean you have an obligation to change people.” She gestured to Calliope. “Let’s keep the blame where it belongs, okay?” She grinned. “And give ourselves the credit for putting a stop to this before any more Adams got made.”

Blake nodded, a slight smile crossing her features. “Right.”

She returned her attention to Calliope, who hadn’t moved in the entire time that Blake had been watching her or talking with Rainbow Dash. She hadn’t so much as fidgeted.

Calliope Ferny was sat in a pristine white interrogation room, the walls made up on rectangular white panels, each panel projecting part of a hardlight shield that surrounded the interior of the room, light green hexagons surrounding her like the bars of a cage, slightly clipping Blake’s view from without — although not so much as to seriously obstruct it. Calliope’s hands rested upon a table as white as the walls which sat in front of her, and she kept her head looking straight ahead of her, eyes fixed upon the door.

She did not move an inch.

Blake’s brow furrowed. “What do you think made her this way?”

“Huh?”

“You just said we’re the sum of the places we’ve been and the people we’ve met,” Blake reminded her. “Who do you think she ran into?”

“Cadance got hold of her files; I took a look at them,” Rainbow said. “Her parents died when she was a kid, but after that … there’s a gap before she shows up in SDC security; maybe something happened to her in that time.”

She paused for a moment. “I’ve got to say, I … I’m not … I kind of hope that we don’t have to put Weiss’ father in prison; it would be a horrible way to repay her for her help, not just with this, but in Low Town too.”

“We can’t let Jacques Schnee escape justice just because we like Weiss,” Blake replied. “But … I agree. I … before, I would have been thrilled at the idea of bringing down Jacques Schnee, letting the whole SDC crumble around him, fall apart, fall to the ground. But now … now, I’d like for there to be a company left for Weiss to inherit. A company for her to redeem, as she wishes.”

Rainbow nodded. “I’d like that too. Not least because if the SDC goes down, it sounds as though it might take Atlas down with it.”

Rainbow gestured with her head towards where Cadance, standing in the metallic corridor, was speaking into her scroll.

“It will stabilize, Ivy; stop panicking,” Cadance said. “Yes, of course the markets are jittery, the markets always hate the unexpected, but once it stops being unexpected, then the fluctuations will stop too, and everything will become priced in. No, I can’t tell you how this is going to end, because I don’t know. I’m about to interview Ferny. I’ll let you know how it goes.” She hung up, putting her scroll back into her purse as she turned around and walked towards Blake and Rainbow Dash. “Sorry about that.”

“Is everything okay, ma’am?” Rainbow asked.

“It will be,” Cadance assured them both. “If a slight economic downturn is the price for justice, for proving that, in this kingdom, the faunus, and the workers, are just as much under the protection of Atlesian power as anyone else, then it’s a price that I, for one, will gladly pay.” She smiled. “You did good work, Rainbow.”

Rainbow looked down at the ground. “All I did was say a word.”

“Not just now,” Cadance said. “You brought this to my attention, you chased it up, and in the end, you found the location, not me. All of this is thanks to you.”

“No, ma’am,” Rainbow replied. “I couldn’t have done it without help.”

“None of us can,” Cadance said. “Now, would you both like to come in with me? Let me do the talking, but … I wouldn’t mind having you in there.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Rainbow said.

“Thank you,” Blake said softly.

Cadance nodded to both of them, then turned away, leaving them to follow in her wake. Her high heels tapped lightly upon the metal floor of the corridor as they walked around the cell to the door.

Cadance held her scroll in front of the scanner mounted to the wall, and the door slid open. As it opened, Blake could see the hardlight barriers that surrounded Calliope Ferny dissolving, if only temporarily, to admit them into the room.

Calliope smiled. It was faint, and only out of one corner of her mouth, but she smiled all the same.

Cadance stepped into the room. Blake and Rainbow Dash followed, taking up positions on either side of the door as said door slid shut, and the hardlight shields reappeared, the hexagons stitching themselves back together until the entire chamber and all its occupants were once more enclosed.

Cadance walked forwards, sitting down at the table opposite Calliope.

“Councillor Mi Amore Cadenza,” Calliope said. “I am honoured.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Cadance murmured. “You’ve been apprised of your rights?”

“I have.”

“Then you know that you’re entitled to representation from a lawyer,” Cadance said.

“I don’t want a lawyer; I don’t need a lawyer,” Calliope said. “I want to make a deal.”

Cadance was silent for a moment. “'A deal'?” she repeated.

“You’ve got me dead to rights,” Calliope declared. “I was there, at the scene of the crime; I tried to get your girls behind you to leave before they found any evidence. I knew what they were looking for. There’s no getting away from this, and I’m not going to waste anyone’s time with pointless tactics that won’t accomplish anything except to inflate some lawyer’s bank balance. I played, I lost, and you can lock me up and throw away the key.” She smirked. “I don’t guarantee I won’t try and escape later, but I won’t resist while you stuff me in the box in the first place.”

“Which raises the question of why I should offer you any sort of deal?” Cadance asked. “After all, as you’ve pointed out, I can nail you to the wall already.”

“Then it’s a good thing the deal isn’t for me, isn’t it?” Calliope asked. “I’m willing to give you everything: the names of all the other executives involved in our little scheme, all the bank accounts that we used to launder the money we garnished from our employees, all of the remaining sites where faunus labourers are … indentured.”

“You mean enslaved,” Blake growled.

“As you like,” Calliope said, her tone not changing in the slightest. “The point is that I can let you bring this whole thing down, rescue everyone—”

“Can you give me Jacques Schnee?” Cadance asked.

Calliope chuckled, leaning back in her chair as she tucked her hands behind her head. “Mister Schnee wasn’t involved. Ever. He didn’t know about the working conditions; he didn’t know about the money; as far as he was concerned, these were legitimate SDC mining sites, and the employees there were having their wages garnished for completely legitimate and legal purposes.”

“And he never asked any questions?” asked Cadance. “He was never suspicious.”

“There’s so much wool in Mister Schnee’s head, it’s child’s play to pull it over his eyes,” Calliope said. “No, he was never suspicious. Why would he be, so long as the company was fantastically profitable and the money kept rolling in?”

Cadance was silent for a moment. “Why?”

Calliope’s eyebrows rose. “Why what?”

“Why give up your co-conspirators? Why confess everything? What do you want?”

“My sister, Calla, had nothing to do with this,” Calliope said, leaning forwards now and resting her hands on the table once more. “Calla would never involve herself in anything like this. She is … my better half. She doesn’t deserve to be harassed, to have her life pulled apart looking for evidence of crimes that aren’t there. I want it written down and signed by you that there will be no charges filed or investigations opened into Calla Ferny-Brown. Absolute immunity, or you won’t get a single word on record from me.”

“If she’s innocent, then what does your sister have to fear from an investigation?”

“Nothing,” Calliope said. “But I don’t want her subjected to the indignity, to be forced to live with the fear of prosecution. She deserves better than that.”

What about the people you abused? What about their indignities? What about their fear? Did you ever think about that? Blake thought, and only with some difficulty restrained herself from speaking.

“That’s all?” asked Cadance.

“What can I say? I love my family,” Calliope said. She smiled. “So, do we have a deal?”

---

“You’re agreeing to this?” Blake demanded. “She’s getting everything she wants?”

“She’s going to prison for a very long time, and so will a number of other people besides,” Cadance corrected her as they stood outside the cell. “And in return, she is getting precisely nothing, except that an innocent woman will not get into any trouble with the law. Which is how things are supposed to work anyway.”

“As you said,” Blake replied, “if she’s innocent, then she has nothing to fear in any case. What if she is involved? What if she’s the mastermind behind it all?”

“That’s speculation,” Cadance said. “There’s no evidence—”

“Because you haven’t investigated yet!”

“Blake!” Rainbow cried. “Cool it, okay?”

Blake took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but … I think it’s too soon to be rushing to make a deal with this woman instead of trying to make as many arrests as possible on our own, with no strings attached.”

“And if this were purely a historic offence, then you would have a point,” Cadance said, “but you heard Ferny: there are more facilities, more faunus suffering abuse and waiting for rescue. Isn’t it more important that we get to them, even if one woman gets let off the hook for her crimes?”

Blake hesitated for a moment. “I’d like to have both,” she muttered.

Cadance chuckled. “I can understand that,” she assured her, “but the guiding principle of the legal system is that it’s better that a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongfully punished.”

“That’s why, when a jury is split evenly, the accused is always acquitted,” Blake murmured, “because mercy should always take precedence over punishment.”

“In Mistral, that is the system,” Cadance said. “Here in Atlas, the jury must return a unanimous verdict in order to convict.”

“Is that difficult?”

“Not if you make your case,” Cadance replied, “or have a confession from one of your lead suspects. Even if Calla Brown is involved in this somehow, letting one woman off the hook in order to bag a sackful of criminals and rescue who knows how many faunus from … from what is, let’s not beat around the bush, slavery … that’s a deal that I’ll take gladly.”

“If Calliope Ferny had asked to be set free as the condition of her deal, would you still have made it?” Blake asked softly.

“No,” Cadance said at once. “I might have discussed less serious charges against her, but I would never have let her walk, not after catching her red-handed.” She smiled. “I want to wrap this up, but not at the expense of justice.”

“But you do want to wrap this up,” Blake pointed out.

Cadance hesitated for a moment. “The markets are flailing at the moment. They’re not sure what’s going on, so they’re assuming the worst. Certainty will restore confidence, and confidence will restore stability; that’s politics, I’m afraid; you have to keep one eye on what the market is saying.”

Blake nodded. “I understand, ma’am; believe me, I don’t want to bring down Atlas’ economy. I’m sorry for snapping at you before.”

“Don’t apologise for being passionate,” Cadance said. “Without it—”

“It wasn’t my passion that brought this to light,” Blake said. “It was Rainbow Dash's.”

“It was a stroke of luck,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Nevertheless, you still shouldn’t apologise,” Cadance declared. “Without passion to move you along, where will you go next? Now, are you both ready?”

“I’d like to ask her something, ma’am,” Blake said. “If I may.”

Cadance was silent for a moment, her face expressionless and hard to read. “What do you want to ask?”

“I … I want to ask about Adam,” Blake said.

“Blake,” Rainbow murmured. “Are you sure that—?”

“I want to know,” Blake insisted. “I want to know … how it started.”

I know how it ended, after all.

Rainbow’s brow furrowed, and she pursed her lips together, looking troubled, but said nothing else on the matter.

Cadance hesitated for a second, before she nodded. “Very well,” she said. “After I’ve got everything I need from her, then you can ask, but until then—”

“Let you do the talking, ma’am,” Blake said. “Understood.”

“Actually, I’m hoping that she’ll do the talking,” Cadance said and tucked the sheaf of papers — Calliope’s deal — under her arm as she once more used her scroll to open the door.

Once more, the door slid open as the shields dissolved around the room. Calliope Ferny did not appear to have moved an inch since they left said room, not even to have turned her head in the slightest. She showed no reaction until Cadance, Rainbow Dash, and Blake walked back in.

The door closed behind them, and the shields went up once more.

Again, Rainbow and Blake took up their positions on either side of the door while Cadance walked to the table and sat down opposite Calliope.

She put the papers down on the table between them. “Your deal, signed by me on behalf of Atlas.”

Calliope began to reach for them, but hesitated. “You don’t mind if I—?”

“Please,” Cadance said gesturing at the deal. “Read it. Read it in more detail than the contracts you had vulnerable, desperate people sign.”

“You make me sound like some kind of predator,” Calliope said.

“Aren’t you?” asked Cadance.

Calliope smiled and reached for the paperwork, turning it around so that she could read it, and then, well, reading it, flicking from one page to the next.

When she was done, she pushed the deal aside. “Thank you, Madam Councillor,” she said. “You are a woman of your word.”

“I try,” Cadance said. “What does that make you?”

Calliope smiled. “Why? A good Atlesian, of course.”

“'Of course?'” Cadance repeated. “After what you’ve done, what you’ve presided over, you claim, you have the audacity to sit there and say that you are a good Atlesian?”

The smile didn’t waver from Calliope’s face. “And how do you think that Nicholas Schnee made his money, Councillor? Do you think that all those Vacuans were happy to see him buying up their land, getting rich off their natural resources? Do you think that the Valish enjoyed seeing the people they’d defeated in the war outpacing them in wealth? Do you think he achieved his position through probity and square dealing? No, he was ruthless and exploitative, just as we are all taught to be—”

“That’s not true,” Cadance said.

“Isn’t it?” Calliope demanded. “Then why do we admire wealth more than virtue, success more than character? Why does every child growing up in Mantle or Low Town dream of making it up to Atlas one day and living like the glittering elite? I did what I had to do to prosper, and I didn’t care who I had to step on to do it. I’m a good Atlesian, I’m the best Atlesian there is, and certainly the most honest.”

Rainbow snorted.

Calliope’s eyebrows. “I think one of your pets disagrees with me, Councillor.”

“They’re not my pets,” Cadance said flatly. She paused for a moment. “And Rainbow Dash can speak for herself.”

Rainbow folded her arms. “You’re right, I disagree. Because you’re wrong.”

“Am I?” Calliope asked. “You think you know better than me what Atlas is?”

“I do know better than you,” Rainbow insisted.

“Why, because you’ve spent a couple of years in the Academy?” Calliope replied.

“Because you can’t buy your way out of this,” Rainbow snarled. “If you’re so great at being an Atlesian, if everyone in Atlas thinks like you, then why are you sitting in a cell, begging to get your sister off the hook while you stare down the barrel of life in prison? If you were right, then you’d be out of here already. But you’re not, because you’re wrong about Atlas. This kingdom stands for something, and you are going to find out just what happens to those who stand against what Atlas stands for.”

Calliope’s face was impassive, but her terrier ears flattened down against the top of her head, the way that Sunset’s ears frequently did whenever she was upset in any way. Blake wondered if it was the same with Calliope Ferny, if they might not offer an insight into what she was feeling that she would rather they didn’t possess.

“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” she asked, in a voice that was calm but brittle at the same time.

Rainbow shrugged. “It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Now it was Calliope’s turn to snort. “See how much, or how little, people care once the price of their stock options stabilises, and then tell me if you still feel that way.”

“You think people won’t find what you’ve done to be awful?” Rainbow demanded.

“People don’t find Mantle awful, except as far as they don’t want to live there,” Calliope said.

Unfortunately, she had a point about that. But, Blake remembered, Rainbow also had a point; ultimately, the operation of Calliope and her fellow conspirators had been stopped, people had been rescued, more people would be rescued, other people would be arrested. Rainbow was right. Calliope’s money had not protected her from those who believed in certain principles of justice.

But those principles weren’t doing anything to help Mantle. Or Low Town, for that matter.

But they do exist, and since they exist, then dedication towards them can be renewed.

Blake was coming to view Atlas as a city of two halves, not in the sense of the rich and the poor — although Atlas and Low Town qualified as such — but rather … Atlas was like the man with two souls, each fighting for control of the body politic.

On the one hand, Rainbow Dash, General Ironwood, Trixie, Starlight, Twilight and all the rest of her and Rainbow’s friends, Councillor Cadenza; the military and the Academy, chiefly, but also those who were in some way associated with them, or simply those who were generous and good-hearted. It was the side of comradeship, loyalty, of a great and formidable instrument made up of many thousands of people all working towards a common purpose greater than any of them. It was the side of action and resolve, but also of integrity of principle.

And on the other side … the squalor of Mantle, the existence of Low Town, the vast wealth of Jacques Schnee, the unabashed villainy of Calliope Ferny. On the other side was money, pure and simple, greed … ruthlessness and exploitation, just as Calliope had said.

Two sides of Atlas, fighting for control of it.

Weiss will bring the SDC from one side to the other, if she is allowed.

More to the point right now, the fact that Calliope Ferny is sitting here proves that the dark side does not hold sway.

Just as Rainbow said.

Calliope returned her attention to Cadance. “So, Councillor, what do you want to know?”

“Who is the ringleader in all of this?” Cadance asked. “Who started it?”

“Those are two different questions,” Calliope replied. “I am the ringleader right now, because none of this would be possible without my security guards. But it didn’t start with me; it was going on in some fashion when I was a child.”

Cadance paused for a moment. “Were you…?”

Calliope reached up, and started undoing her shirt, unfastening the buttons until she could shrug one light blue sleeve off her shoulder, revealing the letters ‘SDC’ seared into her flesh.

Calliope smiled. "The foreman of my work crew liked me, so he put it somewhere I could cover it up, at least some of the time."

Since she was a child? How long ago was that?

Cadance was silent for a moment. "Where you kept at a distance from Mantle and other cities, the way—"

"The way that I do it now?" Calliope asked. "No. It wasn't so organised back then, or at least, I don't think it was. It was … a group of foremen who wanted the power. Mister Legree, our site manager — we worked at the Saar Pit, just outside of Mantle, but not too far away — was an old fossil, so old that he could still remember the old days, before the war. He handpicked people to help him keep acting like it was the old days."

"And nobody knew?"

"Nobody knew, or nobody cared; I don't know which it was," Calliope said. "What I do remember is that our working crews were the hardest-working in the whole SDC; not surprising since we were working longer hours, sleeping in the pits with our tools for company, snatching a few hours in the dark and the cold before waking up to do it all again. What I remember is that, as people died — and they died quickly too, from overwork or scurvy or taking their own lives because death seemed preferable to life in darkness — the foremen and the manager were getting lavish bonuses for exceeding their production quotas. So long as the dust flowed, I don't think anyone would have cared how it was being extracted or how many people were dying to get it out of the ground." She paused a moment. "The work was dangerous. Most people didn't last very long, which was the way they wanted it, of course."

"But you survived," Cadance said.

"Like I said, my foreman liked me," Calliope replied. She smirked. "I'm not sure he liked me so much after I drove a pickaxe into his skull, but he didn't last long after that to have changed feelings. There was a boy called — what was his name? — Adam."

Blake stiffened, her ears pricking up involuntarily.

Calliope glanced towards her. "You … you know him, don't you?"

Blake licked her lips. "I … I knew him," she murmured.

"So he's dead then," Calliope said. "I always wondered what happened to him." She paused for a moment, her gaze switching back and forth between Blake and Rainbow Dash. "Let me guess: you found out about the brand on his face, and you … you thought that you could blame it on me? You thought you could find a monster to bear that crime and all the other crimes of Atlas." She snorted. "Sorry to disappoint you, but Adam and I were … we were at the dustface together, literally. The foreman wasn't kind to him, but … he was strong; he was a survivor, like me. We planned to escape together, and he did escape; I never saw him again. How did he die?"

"He … he joined the White Fang," Blake said.

"And Atlas killed him," Calliope murmured. Her eyes narrowed. "No … you killed him."

"That's enough," Rainbow growled, taking a step forward, her hands clenching into fists. "Get back on topic."

"This is why I never saw the point of the White Fang," Calliope said. "Fighting for people who are too weak to fight for themselves, who are so shackled by petty morality that they revile those who fight for them, call their own defenders terrorists. You may as well look out for yourself, work for yourself, and let the moralists eat virtue and drink from the cup of good behaviour, if they can find it."

Blake's ears drooped down, even as her head bowed. So … that was it? That was all?

Of course it was. She wasn't Pyrrha; there wasn't a single villain that she could fight; there wasn't anyone whom she could challenge to single combat to best and in the besting make her problems go away. She was confronting something larger, more protean, a creature with many heads and many different forms that would not be easily slain.

But she had always known that and made her peace with it. But still … it would have been comforting to have brought the blame for Adam home to roost on somebody's still living head.

"They should have killed me after that," Calliope went on, "but the guard who was assigned to take me out and put a bullet in the back of my head … I guess she liked me too. In a real way, this time, not just in a 'hide the brand on my skin'—"

"Where did the brands come from?" asked Cadance.

"They were for branding crates," Calliope explained. "Cargo. Property. Shows you how they saw us, huh? But Eva was … different. She let me go home, to my sister; I didn't tell Calla about where I'd been, I told her not to worry about it. Of course, without me around, she'd ended up in the foster system … at first, I wanted to take her away from there, but … she'd ended up with a nice family. A prosperous family, whose work kept them in Mantle — the father was a middle manager at the SDC refinery — but they lived in a nice high rise above the haze, and they were going to send Calla to a fancy private school in Atlas. I couldn't take her away from that. They could offer her a better life than I could. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Having a good life. If you don't have to fight for it, like Calla didn't, thanks to her foster folks, then great. If you do, like me, then you fight for it."

"No matter who you hurt," Cadance said.

"It's a fight," Calliope replied. "Hurting other people is kind of inevitable."

"So you went to work for SDC Security," Cadance said.

Calliope nodded. "That's right. I climbed the ranks. I killed everyone who'd ever been involved in the Saar Pit, and I made connections with other departments, other rising stars. Eventually, I became head of security—"

"And decided to do to others what had been done to you," said Cadance.

"Oh, I did much more than that," Calliope said. "This wasn't just a matter of one site manager, a few pliable or corruptible foremen, and tamed guards; I built a network. I'd had a lot of time, as I was climbing the corporate ladder, to think about what I was going to do and how to do it. I set up a dummy recruitment agency, with links to real recruitment agencies who would screen out the people that I was looking for: hopeless cases, people without families, people desperate for work, people who'd newly arrived in Atlas—"

"People who could disappear without causing a fuss," Cadance said flatly.

"Precisely."

"Did the legitimate recruitment agencies know what you wanted these people for?"

"If they worked it out, it's not because I told them," Calliope said. "The explanation was that we wanted people who could work away from home for a prolonged period of time: no children or parents to look after, nothing holding them down. If they thought our criteria for that was a little odd, nobody questioned it. The heads of personnel, payroll, and legal were all involved, along with subordinate members of their departments. Personnel drew up the contracts for the workers, including the right to garnish wages to cover necessary expenses. Legal reviewed the contracts and signed them as legal, so we'd be covered unless someone actually went to one of our facilities and had a look around. Payroll ensured that everything looked right on the internal payslip records."

"What was the point of all this?" Cadance asked.

"Money," Calliope said simply.

"Doesn't an SDC executive get paid enough?"

Calliope chuckled. "Okay, maybe it wasn't just about the money. It was … kind of fun, too. Sneaking around Mister Schnee's nose. Hiding the truth. It was exciting. But mostly, it was all about the money. There were two stages, really, the first being that we were garnishing a lot more money out of the nominal wages of our employees for accommodation and food than we were actually spending on them, and keeping the rest. Nevertheless, it looked as though a lot of money was being spent on these people, so that reduced the number of questions being asked. The rest of their wages, what wasn't being garnished away, was being paid into bank accounts controlled by myself and my co-conspirators, from where it was distributed amongst us each month."

"And what did you bring to the table?" Cadance asked. "Payroll, Legal, Personnel—"

"They needed my security guards to maintain the facilities," Calliope said. "I knew them, I knew which ones would be willing to go along with this and which ones would have an attack of conscience and so had to be kept well away. Plus, it was my idea in the first place; none of them would have come up with it on their own. And I chose the sites. I selected locations where dust had been discovered, but it had been judged too difficult or expensive to actually mine it there. I was the one who went to Mister Schnee and proposed that we should have a go anyway. Every time, I promised that it could be done cheaply, that the reward would be worth the expense, and he agreed. He'd agree to anything so long as you told him that the reward would be worth the expense.

"Of course, once we'd got the people out there, we kept on extending their contracts, or rather, they kept choosing to extend their contracts, completely voluntarily, of course. At least as far as the company records were concerned, anyway. One thing I will say is that I didn't work them to death the way that Mister Legree worked so many of us to death at Saar Pit. I worked them hard, yes, but some of them lasted for years. Some of them even joined Security. Does that surprise you?"

"A little," Cadance murmured.

Calliope smiled. "Despite the circumstances, I think we formed a connection, those workers and I. They understood that I didn't hate them; they understood the lesson that I'd learnt at Saar Pit, that if you are willing to work hard and not have too many qualms, you, too, can achieve great success in this, the greatest of kingdoms."

"Until you get caught," Rainbow muttered.

"Mantle was once defeated in war," Calliope reminded them. "Humbled and brought low. And in that spirit, it seems to me that, as a good Atlesian, the only thing for me to do is … rise again."

Rainbow snorted. "I don't see that happening."

"No, I didn't expect you would," Calliope said. "But that just means that it will be all the sweeter when I do."

Comments

[Kiue Jin]

...Well, as a silver lining to this tale of horror and greed, I don't think Mister Schnee will be running for Councilership. The PR department is never going to be able to cover this one up or live it down: Your daughter's teammate being caught up in a racial scandal is one thing, but this... oh boy, it honestly might be better to burn the company down and split the pieces into new, fresh companies with new people.

[Mastermind4892]

Cadance chuckled. “I can understand that,” she assured her, “but the guiding principle of the legal system is that it’s better that a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongfully punished.”

And another principle of justice is that allowing one prisoner's cell to be a little more comfortable is an infinitesimal exchange for taking down another hundred evil men. And as for the evident and harsh gap between the Atlesian ideal and the Atlesian reality, I like to remind myself that humanity's moral compass still points in the right direction. Progress may be slow, but every step is worth it. And this was a giant step.

I'd like to see Calliope try to get out of this. Even if she doesn't spend the rest of her days in prison, her life is over. It's hard enough for an ex-convict to get a job after a burglary charge, but for running a slave ring? To put it bluntly, that will always stick to her as much as the brand on her shoulder.

As for Weiss, she may still return to Beacon after all in hopes of winning the Vytal Festival and winning back some prestige to the Schnee name. An accomplishment of her own, not her father's. And Blake? She gave the SDC its biggest black eye and won the most significant victory for her people since the Faunus Rights Revolution without even firing a shot. One month in Atlas, and she has already accomplished more than Sienna Khan has in a decade. Her father will be proud.

And now, on to Dr. Merlot!

[Kiue Jin]

Actually, thinking on this a bit more... I'm reminded of a fairy tale I once heard. Considering this was Rwby I felt it appropriate to share. It isn't a pleasant one.

Once there was an ogre with a taste for human flesh. A blacksmith by trade, his goods were of the highest quality. So good was business going that he reached a point where he needed help to keep up with demand, so that night he visited a distant village and abducted three brothers from their home. He forced them to work metal, beating them when they made mistakes or errors and fed them only scraps from his table once he was done eating.

One night the eldest brother grabbed a knife from the kitchen to sneak into the ogre's bedroom while he was sleeping with intent to kill him, but the knife betrayed him to its master by crying out, waking the ogre up. The ogre killed the Eldest Brother before savaging beating the remaining two like never before.

The Middle Brother created a set of lock-picks and, one night, picked the lock with plans to escape. The door swung open... and the ogre was waiting for him on the other side. Not only was the Middle Brother beating to death, the ogre forced the youngest brother to eat his remains as a stew.

The Youngest Brother kept his head down and worked hard. Over time his skill improved to the point where the ogre had no excuse to beat him anymore. One day, after the Youngest Brother had crafted a beautiful looking knife and the ogre was leaning down to inspect it in detail, the Youngest Brother slammed it into the ogres throat, killing him and freeing himself from his cruel slavemaster. However, rather then run away the Youngest Brother claimed the workshop as his own since the only craft he knew to support himself was being a blacksmith and with the ogre dead the place was his by right of conquest. He ate from the ogres lauder and slept in his bed, all the while continuing to work as a blacksmith and improving his craft until he was of great renown.

One day his business got so successful that he was going to need help keeping up with demand...

This seems to capture Calliope's story perfectly.

[Mister Morden]

Well well well, not the answer I was expecting. Hopefully all of the guilty parties can have all of their money and assets liquidated and dispersed to the freed slaves.

In a way, she reminds me of Zorg from the 5th Element.
"You're a monster Zorg."
*Beat*
"I know."

She tried to cover it up, lied to herself... But she knows what she is and accepts it.

[Lancerguy]

This is what I wanted Phoebe to be, a villain that we don't sympathize with in the slightest, but one we still understand nonetheless. This was a great chapter to flesh out a minor villain, and I hope we see more of her in the future as a result

[Aleck_Ultimate]

That's en incredibly great and credible character development, as dark as realistic.

No really evil, just forged feelless by feelless.

The kind of I would like to being capable of writing myself.