For people who know me, but not RWBY, it's a web series from Rooster Teeth, and can be found on YouTube. I stumbled across it in the first part of 2014, and have really enjoyed it.
Chapter One: Schnees, Lies, and Politics
In which Ruby and Velvet talk about the Schnee family.
Ruby Rose was walking through the library at Beacon Academy. She was looking for a book, in which she hoped to find the answer to a question that had troubled her since the day she'd arrived at the most prestigious school in all of Remnant.
Unfortunately, Ruby had little idea what sort of book she needed to look at, or where in the library she should be searching. The fifteen year old was the first to admit that, while she liked to read, she was not the most diligent student. If the book she was reading or the subject she was studying didn't involve weapons, the creatures of Grimm she was training to kill with weapons, or stories about Huntsmen and Huntresses using weapons to kill creatures of Grimm, Ruby had trouble getting interested.
"I suppose I should start at a catalogue terminal," she mused quietly, eyeing one of the holographic workstations spaced around the edge of the library's central atrium. The ones in Ruby's immediate vicinity were occupied, but a glance across the atrium showed several unoccupied ones... Velvet Scarlatina.
The name popped into Ruby's mind immediately she spied the older student's ears sticking up from behind a low set of shelves. About one in twenty Beacon students were Faunus, as opposed to Human. A few had tails, more had horns, while most, like Velvet, sported a set of animal-like ears in addition to their human-like ones. Velvet was the only Faunus at Beacon who had rabbit ears though, making her instantly recognizable even when those ears were all that could be seen of her.
Ruby hurried across the library. Velvet was sitting by herself at a table, a book in one hand and a pen in the other, taking notes as she read. As Ruby approached, Velvet's rabbit ears, which had been leaning back in a semi-relaxed position, suddenly snapped upright, and Velvet turned her head in Ruby's direction.
"Oh, hello Ruby," Velvet smiled, her ears lowering again when she saw the other girl.
"Hey Velvet," Ruby replied by way of a greeting. "Do you mind if I join you for a bit?"
"Not at all," Velvet answered, gesturing at the chair across the table from her. "Have a seat."
Ruby sat, and got right to the point. "I have a question, Velvet, and I hope maybe you can answer it for me."
Velvet sat up, a curious expression on her face. "What is it?"
"Well," Ruby began, "when I first got to Beacon I accidentally met two of my teammates before they were my teammates and...you know I'm partnered with Weiss Schnee, right?"
Velvet blinked at Ruby's sudden verbal swerve, but nodded.
"You should feel honored, Ruby. The Schnee's are great people."
It was Ruby's turn to blink. "Uh," she stammered. "Anyway, Blake Belladonna, my other teammate, apart from Weiss and my sister, she said the Schnee Dust Company had controversial labor forces and I was wondering if maybe you knew what she meant by that?"
Velvet blinked again. She didn't know Ruby very well, and wondered if the so-red-headed-her-hair-was-almost-black girl who'd been admitted into Beacon two years early always talked so fast.
"Well," Velvet said, with thoughtful slowness, "whether the Schnee labor force is controversial, and how it's controversial, depends on the personal politics of who you ask."
"Politics wha huh?" Ruby's perplexed expression matched the tone in her voice.
"You know that the Schnee Dust Company is one of the largest employers in all of Remnant, right?" Velvet said. Ruby nodded in agreement. The Schnee's had holdings on every continent, in every region, in nearly every land, nation, or kingdom.
"And that the majority, which is to say somewhat more than half, of their employees are Faunus," Velvet continued.
"Yes," Ruby agreed emphatically, "When Faunus are only twenty-five percent of the general population."
Velvet nodded in affirmation. "Some people - like the White Fang - say that disparity means the Schnee's are unfairly exploiting Faunus labor."
"What do other people say?" Ruby asked curiously.
"That the Schnee's are unfairly excluding Humans from high paying jobs."
"Wait," Ruby countered. "You mean the Schnees pay their Faunus workers well?"
"The Schnees pay all of their workers well," Velvet clarified. "Dust mining is dangerous. They have to pay well to get anyone to do it, and they treat Humans and Faunus exactly alike."
Ruby stared dumbfounded at the other girl. "How is that controversial?" she finally demanded.
"Well, sadly, there are still places in Remnant where the only decent paying job a Faunus can get is at a Schnee dust mine," Velvet explained. "But at the same time, in many of those places, a Schnee dust mine is also the only place a Human can get a decent paying job. So if the Schnee's preferentially hire Faunus..."
"...the Humans resent it, and not entirely unjustly so," Ruby finished the thought.
Ruby sat quietly for just a moment, thinking, then blurted, "The Schnee's don't hate Faunus?"
"No, no they don't," Velvet denied. "They hate the White Fang, the current Mister Schnee especially, and with good reason, if you ask me. Granted, the late Mister Schnee might not approve of the current Mister Schnee's...zeal...in the matter," Velvet hesitated, "but he'd approve of the cause. He did approve of the cause, in fact, because the war between the two began before he passed, when the White Fang killed his youngest son, the current Mister Schnee's brother, and Mistress Schnee's uncle."
"Mistress Schnee," Ruby repeated softly. "Wow, Velvet. You really admire the Schnees, don't you?"
Velvet nodded. "The White Fang...like to pretend it didn't happen." The Faunus girl's voice quavered ever so slightly. "They like to harp on how the Schnees owned Faunus slaves. Which is true. Faunus slavery was legal in many places before the Revolution, and the Schnees used Faunus slaves everywhere it was legal for them to do so."
"The White Fang don't like to hear that the Schnees treated their slaves better than some people treated their free workers." Velvet gave Ruby a hard look. "They say that's sugarcoating an inherently evil, brutally violent institution; that anyone who says so is a revisionist, or a racist, or both."
"Even when a Faunus says it?" Ruby asked, and Velvet nodded.
"I've been called a liar, a race traitor," she explained bitterly. "A pet. An animal cracker. Amongst other things. So was my grandfather, who actually was a slave, having been born into it, and who called the day the Schnees took over the mine where he'd been born the greatest day of his life. 'Like unto the Day of Jubilee' was how he always put it."
"What else don't the White Fang like to hear?" Ruby queried. Her knowledge of history was sketchy. She knew that Humans had lost the Faunus War, had been forced to give up their plan to confine all Faunus to a single homeland, and that was about it. That some, any, Humans had supported the Faunus, was something she had never heard, and she wondered briefly why her teachers had neglected to mention it.
"What else don't the White Fang like to hear?" Velvet repeated. "They don't like to hear how the Schnees routinely manumitted their slaves after five or six years of labor. They don't care to be told that the Schnees educated their slaves, even when and where it was illegal to do so. They get bent out of shape when you mention that, as war loomed, the Schnees basically let Faunus slaves who wanted to go and fight - like my grandfather - leave. Technically they were escapes, but the slaves always knew which gates would be left unlocked." Velvet chuckled, so unexpectedly that Ruby started in surprise. Velvet noticed, and leaned forward to explain.
"My grandfather and some of his friends 'escaped' from the Yellowtail Mine in Ambervylle, and joined a Faunus army that was forming across the border in Mistral. He said that the day before they were going to leave, the Mister Schnee who ran the mine confronted them, and warned them in no uncertain terms that they should not try to escape through the northwest gate, nor should they head a mile west through the woods to the railroad where a freight train bound for Mistral would stop at 10:15 p.m. because of 'mechanical problems', and that if they did escape he would be legally bound to report them to the local authorities as soon as they were missed which would probably take two or three days because, as he said, 'All you Faunus look alike to me.' "
Ruby sat back, gobsmacked, while Velvet grinned.
"The Schnees...did that?"
"And more," Velvet elaborated. "The night my grandfather escaped, when he and his companions reached the northwest gate, not only was it unlocked and unguarded, but piled against the guard shack were knapsacks, extra rations, water purification bottles, a first aid kit, a map, a compass and a watch, along with two shotguns and a pistol, and some ammunition."
"Then why?" Ruby said, bewildered. "Why turn on people who were on your side? Why did the White Fang do that?"
"Politics," Velvet answered bluntly.
"I don't understand," Ruby wailed.
"The current leaders of the White Fang want a new revolution against Humans. Revolution requires that the people be angry at the injustice and mistreatment they're suffering at the hands of their oppressors. If said oppression and mistreatment is lacking, well then, you have to create it. The Schnees as generally decent, honorable people who helped the Faunus in their time of servitude and after, are an obstacle to the goal of revolution. An obstacle that has to be removed, by any means necessary, if the revolution is to happen."
"That's insane!" Ruby exclaimed.
"It's also cynical, cold-blooded, political calculation," Velvet added. "I think that, whatever she used to believe, Blake came to the same conclusion." She gave Ruby a meaningful look. "I think that's why she's able to get along with Weiss, even though she's 'the enemy'."
"Whatever do you mean?" Ruby said, cringing slightly at how awkward she sounded.
Velvet smiled. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I suspect that Blake is a Faunus, and probably a former member of the White Fang."
"Uh..."
"Blake introduced herself to me early on," Velvet clarified. "She asked, in a very round-about way, how much of a hard time I get for being a Faunus. All very innocently, mind. She comes around to chat now and then, and she sometimes says things that make me wonder if she's hiding something under that bow she always wears."
Velvet affected not to notice the panicked look on Ruby's face. "Of course, if she is a Faunus, and doesn't want people to know, well, that's her business, and I won't pry."
A soft, familiar chime sounded throughout the library. Velvet picked up her scroll. "2:55," she noted. "I have a class at three." She gathered her things and stood up. "I'll see you later, Ruby. It was nice talking to you."
Ruby watched the bunny-eared girl walk away. Velvet had certainly answered Ruby's question, but she'd caused Ruby to think of many more.
"Now I have to find even more books," Ruby thought.
