Disclaimer: This series starts dark at the top of this chapter, but for those of you who are also following "I Want a Cub" you already know the future for the Faunus rights movement is much brighter. This a telling of how that future came to be, so please do not take this chapter's darkness as indicative for the whole story. I promise you that it isn't, but it did need to be written.

I Want Monochrome

As an heiress poised to take over her father's company, Weiss Schnee had many expectations that she had to live up to. She was now a legal adult. She'd been hesitant at first to oversee any further responsibilities afforded to her. Beacon kept her busy enough, but her father was starting to grow exhausted of those excuses. It was time that she started learning what it meant to have true responsibility in the company.

Now, some might have assumed that this meant sending his daughter a load of paperwork. Others might have suggested giving her some menial position of authority. Wilson Schnee, however, was an uncanny man. Instead, he decided to test his daughter to the brink.

He knew she could do it. All she needed was a push in the right direction.

His confidence in her abilities overshadowed what some of his collogues coined good business sense. Wilson had recently purchased a plot of land from a wealthy tycoon who wanted nothing more to do with the property. It was a floundering mining shaft. The laborers wore rags, and the children were nearly starving. They were a large sized group of Faunus, housed in a single domicile that had seen better days.

Illness ran rampant, the young laborers were uneducated. Worst of all, the very young children were being indoctrinated into this hell-hole of a Faunus labor. It was this property that he gave to Weiss, telling her to do with it as she pleased. Wilson's faith in Weiss led him to believe she would turn the mineshaft profitable once more.

Weiss, however, was very much not feeling up to the task. Upon her return to Beacon, her mind was staggering. Here she had the power to change the lives of these people, and yet, she had no idea how to go about doing that. She was among the privileged. An extremely well-educated girl, having grown up in the lap of luxury. Yet, she was also cynical and unsure.

There was only one thing she knew. "I need help…"

There would be only one person who might even begin to understand the atrocities that Weiss had just bore witness to. One person who could even begin to pick the pieces of this complicated mess into manageable, reasonable chunks. There were so many things that needed to get done, and no possible way for Weiss to do them all. She spilled her guts in the quiet of the dorm room to the only true Faunus friend she had.

"I don't know what to do." Weiss recounted.

"Take a breath, Weiss." Blake instructed.

Weiss recounted her horrors, mentioning one young boy sleeping in a pile of straw. Where else was he to sleep? He didn't have a bed. She recalled the meals, and how god awful they looked. Some of that food had to have been rotting…but it was all they had. Shipments to that mine shaft came around once a month. Her list of problems ran on, and on.

"The lien allotment that I'm being given is finite. Even if I were to toss in everything I have in my own savings…" Weiss bit her lip. "I have several hundred-thousand lien, but with the repairs they need, we're talking figures well into the low millions."

"Take it one step at a time..."

"I can't..." She wished it was that simple. That she could disregard things that easy. "They're living in their own filth, Blake…they don't even have a properly built latrine."

She was pacing back and forth. Grasping for instantaneous answers that neither one of them had. "What's more dangerous? Illness from the soiled food and bugs flying around? Or is it the fecal matter?" Blue eyes wide, as if the horrors were still in front of her, Weiss shook her head again. "Do I start with the food shipments, so that they get safer deliveries more regularly? Or do I bulldoze the housing and rebuild from the ground up? It's so bad right now, they're not shitting in a snow ditch that melts sixteen times a year." Her lower lip quivered. "The run off….dear god…the runoff. It's probably filled with cholera…and...and who knows what else!"

Blake was livid, and not just because of the atrocities that were spewing out of Weiss, but because of the utterly shell-shocked expression that still graced her features. When was the last time she'd had a shower? Blake knew it hadn't been that day. The smell of god-only-knew-what caked Weiss from top to bottom, disgusting, and more than enough proof that Weiss was not in good condition.

It was easy to believe everything Weiss said, to think it was every bit as terrible. The Schnee Dust Company was not a group that put their labor forces first. Blake had seen those kinds of labor before, but had Weiss? No. The heiress didn't know. She hadn't had a clue before that trip.

Just the sight of those 'questionable business practices' had single handedly done insurmountable damage to Weiss. It had easily done more than the White Fang could ever hope to achieve…and in some way, that pissed Blake off even more. Hot air tore through Blake's mouth, as she sighed out a great deal of rage.

"The first thing you're going to do Weiss, you're going to take a long shower. Then you'll eat a hot meal, and then get some rest." Blake's voice was dangerously low, cutting off any retort before it could start. "I'm going to help you figure this out, but right now, if conditions really were that bad, you're a contagion waiting to spread. If you get sick, you help no one."

"Shower…right…" Weiss said numbly. Shaking her head as Blake's words sunk into her. "I should have thought of that…"

Blake watched her walk into the adjoining bathroom and close the door. It was only after the lock clicked shut that Blake collapsed back down on her bed. She was going to have a lot of work to do. First thing was first, Weiss had laundry that needed doing, and after her shower, there would be a bathroom in need of bleaching…but before all of that, there was someone she needed to call.

Her fingers tapped across the scroll as she dialed the number by heart. It rang three times before her partner picked up. "Hellloooooo."

"Yang, we have a situation…" Blake forced out between clenched teeth. She was trying to keep her words calm and controlled. In truth, her desire was to yell, scream, and blaspheme the head of the Schnee family to hell and back again. "Weiss needs you here…I need you here…and I know it's unfair to ask this when you-"

"Blakey…you're crying…whatever it is, we'll be there." Yang's unwaveringly soft tone hushed her. "Me and Ruby are going to come back just as soon as we grab our things, okay?"

Now that Yang mentioned it, she could feel the hot tears streaming down her face. A sob nearly choked her as ragged breath fell from her lips. "Yeah…" Her voice sounded so strangled, it surprised even her.

"I promise you, we'll be back just as soon as we can." Yang promised, one-hundred percent slipping into momma Yang mode. "Can you do something for me? Try to stay calm until we get there? You're making me want to dive through the screen, Blakey, but teleportation hasn't been invented yet."

"I just…Yang..."

"Yeah, Blakey?"

"This is bad." Blake murmured, rubbing at her eyes. She had to pull herself together before Weiss saw her, or there would be a major meltdown in the room before the sisters even got back. "Really, really bad…"

It was a stroke of mercy that the call ended when it did. Blake doubted she could keep her own composure for very long. She knelt under her bed. A bunch of notebooks were crammed into a box. They were her own musings, a great many of them detailing her experiences. The White Fang had contingences for refugees. She wrote about many things. Her dreams for the future, and her thoughts on the SDC. She needed that perspective now, and she pieced together the puzzles from her past.

A time when her young mind was so eager to do anything…everything…she could do. A time when even she forced a change in this world. Maybe, there was something worth salvaging from that extremist view.

Weiss came back clean, but an empty husk of the person that Blake knew her to be. Weiss was mechanical in her movements, mutely acting by memorization only. It was absolutely not healthy in the slightest. The girl even dressed in the room, eyes wide, haunted. Blake averted her gaze when she realized, Weiss wasn't thinking at all. The heiress was just going through motions, and Blake couldn't bear to take that sight anymore.

"Weiss," Blake reminded her. "Go get something to eat."

"No."

"Weiss, go."

"I can't."

"You can."

"I…" It was like her brain just stopped, and Weiss stopped talking along with it, looking at the floor.

At some figment of something that Blake couldn't see. "Don't argue. I'm going to the laundry room, and then I'm going to scrub down the bathroom." Blake told her. "You are going to the cafeteria, and you're going to get some warm soup." Blake left to do purely what had to be done.

Weiss went to the cafeteria, but she just couldn't bring herself to eat. How could she? Sitting here in Beacon, with food she had complained about over, and over, and over again. Taken it for granted for the past three years.

The people she was now in charge of, what did they have? She just couldn't do it, she just couldn't eat, knowing they were starving. She did the only thing she could do. She went back to her dorm room, huddled under the covers and cried. Cried for all of the answers she wanted to have, but simply didn't. Cried for the guilt that was kicking her insides around worse than any Grimm ever could.

And that was how Blake found her after scrubbing out the bathroom with bleach. Soft sobs breaking the otherwise claustrophobic silence.

"Weiss?" Blake asked, wondering…fearing for her teammate. They didn't always get along, but the girl was hardly her enemy in any of this.

"I'm sorry…" It was the only echo in her mind. The only words she could think of. The only words that weren't self-destructive. "I'm sorry…I didn't know…I d-didn't e-e-even…"

Blake was hugging her in an instant. "You didn't know." She repeated, as she curled the both of them into the farthest most corner of the bed, cocooned in the blankets. "You just didn't know." Inwardly, she was breathing a sigh of relief. The shock was over, Weiss could shatter to bits properly and then Ruby and Yang could help pick up the pieces when they got here. "It's okay. You know now. You can fix this." Blake would just have to hold out until then…until she could shatter to bits too. "We can fix this."

Blake had no idea how long they lay like that, with Weiss shivering in her arms like a rag-doll. Weiss sometimes dozed, but she woke up in tears again, burying herself in Blake's shoulder. More guilt, more anger than Weiss knew what to do with. All of it shredding into her again and again.

The Faunus was at a loss. Weiss needed to understand, this was not her fault. This was the god-awful power Atlas as a government, the political view at large. This was the bigoted moral compass of the wealthy, the fearmongering of the poor…it was idiocy and it was barbaric…but it was not her fault…

They would fix this, somehow. They'd fix that whole bastardized company, and they could start with that sorry excuse for a mining community.

For right now, though, and the sentiment more repeating… "This isn't your fault, Weiss…"

"But I left them there…"

"To get help." Blake told her. "We're going to fix this…but first, we need to fix you. I need you to pull yourself together…you're really starting to worry me."

The dorm room door couldn't have flown off of its hinges faster as Yang and Ruby barreled into it. "We…forgot…our scrolls…" Yang panted, looking around the room.

"What's wrong?" Ruby was already on the bed, tugging down the covers. "Weiss, Blake?"

"It's been a long day, Ruby…" Blake tried to move, but Weiss clung even tighter.

"No! Don't..." Weiss was clutching onto Blake's shirt, shivering anew. "Don't..."

Yang and Ruby didn't need to be told twice, even though they were baffled beyond belief, they were scared now too. Weiss wasn't a crier. She didn't just break down without a good reason, and Ruby, had never seen a crisis quite like this. Blake was on the knife's edge of emotion, and that was three for three. Yang was not about to let the team fall apart as she wrapped her arms around both Weiss and her baby sister…trapping Blake in a three person, sideways, dogpile.

It was how they stayed, and Weiss, oddly smooshed in the middle, made no complaint. That was the most worrying detail of all.

Sometime throughout the night, though Blake hadn't exactly been sure when, team JNPR had joined the continuing growing cuddle puddle. The entire bed from head to foot was a tangled mass of limbs and friends. Blake knew it was Nora that had started it, she was the only person brazen enough to impede on a private moment. As for how the other three ended up there? It was anyone's guess. Team RWBY never bothered to ask, JNPR didn't tell. When daylight came around, they all went to breakfast quietly. No one, not even Nora asked the question on everyone's mind.

What in the hell happened?

They needed a new door, and the sisters needed to contact their father and get their scrolls. Yang was sure they'd left them in their bedroom. Along with half of their clothes, and most of Ruby's homework. Actually everything...they'd left everything and made a run for the station.

Making a formal report to Ozpin was the only way to get out of this situation.

"Why wouldn't the two of you simply knock?" Goodwitch was -rightfully- flabbergasted when the sisters glossed over the team emergency as if it were nothing.

"Well, when our teammates are upset about things…you know how it is…" Yang shrugged awkwardly.

"We should probably tell him." Blake said quietly.

"Blake, no."

"You guys haven't even told us, yet." Ruby told Blake, her mouth thinning into a tight line upon seeing Weiss cower.

"Is there a problem, Ms. Schnee?" Glynda asked, but it was free of her usual biting tone. This held concern.

Weiss shrunk under the question, and Blake had to fight hard, very hard in fact, not to let loose a very Faunus sounding snarl. Control and calculation would win the day. Maybe it would get them the help they needed. "The Schnee Dust Company…how much do you know?"

The two faculty members turned to look at each other. That was not the topic they expected. Glynda immediately went to the office door, locking it, as Ozpin eyed the girls with concern. "We know enough." He said softly enough not to startle the girls further. "Enough, at any rate, to understand the clandestine nature of such a question…"