I chewed half-heatedly on my toast as I watched my Scroll's screen, paying more attention to the news than the meal, the volume on the ANN report turned up to the maximum.
"We are now on the second day of the general strike in Mantle, with no resolution in sight," the newscaster said. "Even as the stock market sees a dip across the board, White Fang representatives maintain their position that there will be no resuming work until they are met at an official negotiating settlement. A list of corporations considered to have unsafe work conditions and unacceptable wages was made public, along with an official request for a conference moderated by the Atlesian Council."
After over half a year of laying low following their failure to make a breakthrough in Atlas City, the White Fang had finally made their move. They hadn't pulled any punches either: every major Dust mine and refinery in Mantle had been shut down and surrounded by pickets, along with over twenty manufacturing facilities. The blow had all of Atlas reeling. Dust was the lifeblood of the kingdom, and now that the flow had been thinned every sector of the country was feeling it. Actual shortages were a long way in the future, but already there was talk of rationing if the strike kept for more than four months. Atlas News Network was being very careful to maintain the appearance of being the moderate news outlet of the kingdom, noting rising consequences to the economy yet never outright condemning the strikes, but other networks were not being so diplomatic. Atlas Comcast was already calling for the declaration of martial law and the forceful dispersal of 'treasonous elements' by the army. The longer the strike continued, I thought, the uglier this was all going to get.
My sympathies here were squarely on the Faunus side, but for all that I didn't see a way for them to make any real gains out of this. The corporations wouldn't give an inch unless they were in real danger of taking a permanent loss, and it was pretty much a certainty the Council would step in before it came to that. I closed the window when the report changed to covering corporate press conferences, having already seen enough of those to know the essence of what I'd be listening to. Such and such company would not bow to extortionists and agitators, the ailing economy would hurt Faunus most of all, they should be grateful for having jobs at all. No mention of negotiations from anyone, because going to the table would be effectively admitting that our mighty captains of industry were doing something wrong. I got the impression that they were wary of the credibility the White Fang would win out of managing to force a settlement, even an unfavourable one. It'd set a precedent none of the big companies would be truly comfortable with. I polished off the rest of my breakfast and abandoned the dining room, seeing by the hour I was close to running late.
I had an actual fixed schedule, these days. It was an inevitable part of going to school. Pleiades Academy was the preparatory school it'd been agreed I would enrol in after turning twelve. High-brow place – Mother had refused to allow the more technically-inclined Pelagian School when I'd floated the notion, since it was open to all the riff-raff – but with a noted scholarship program for talented youths and enough of the upper crust's children in attendance that I'd be rubbing elbows with the kind of kids she wanted me to make connections with. I was still less than inclined to cooperate with that. Behaving like a good little Atlas boy was already enough of a pain when I had to do it with adults, the thought of playing that game with goddamn children had me wincing in advance. I'd whined to Weiss about it over Scroll call, but she'd pointedly replied by laying out the sum of her social engagements to me for the next two months. I was getting off lightly in comparison, even if I didn't like it. To be honest the thought of returning to school when I'd likely be bored senseless through the first few years of classes didn't exactly have me chomping at the bit, but it would get me out of Marigold House. Having a few stolen hours now and then away from Mother's sharp eyes should be worth the boredom. And if it wasn't, well, I could always put in the work and graduate early.
Pleiades was wealthy enough an academy to have a landing strip, so it was the family airship that took me the school. The sheer waste that must be involved in that large a vehicle getting a single person downtown was mind-boggling, but then the Marigolds had been wealthy since before I was born and only gotten richer since. Though I'd been put in the Advanced Placement program, my day began with homeroom like everyone else. That initial free period for announcements and teacher counselling was probably my least favourite part of the day. There were four different classes in my grade, named after colours, and mine was Pale. There must have been some behind-the-scenes influence peddling involved, because by sheer 'coincidence' Pale class also happened to have another three corporate brats. Teal Vogel, second daughter of one of the foremost airship manufacturers in Atlas. Fern Laurent, heir to Laurent Imports – the company mostly shipped food in from Vale, as I understood it – and Slate Fischer, the youngest kid of Thaw Incorporated's CEO. Specialized in Dust-seeking expeditions, that last one, though they left the actual exploitation to other companies.
Fischer was the only one of the three that didn't have me considering strangling at least once a day, but for the better part of an hour every morning I found myself stuck entertaining them all. After the necessary announcements every morning our teacher left us to our devices, and that mostly involved socializing for twelve years olds. It'd taken me a while to understand exactly why they stuck to me like glue when I was being distantly polite at best, but once again Weiss had come to the rescue when I'd vented. Corporations in Atlas couldn't be classified as easily as declaring one was first-rate and another second-rate, since fortunes could be made in the span of a few months when the military decided to spend heavily in a particular area, but it could be said that there was a tangible difference between companies that were a household name and those that weren't. The SDC was the classic example of that. There were other Dust companies in Remnant and in Atlas, but to Atlesians the face of Dust was the Schnee logo and guarantee of quality. Their affiliate companies in other areas had competition, but when it came to Dust the SDC reigned supreme.
There were a few other corporations in the same general weight class, like the Floral Company that built and ran most the greenhouses keeping Atlas fed or Steelclad Solutions and their death grip on cybernetics and android platforms. None of the others were as outrageously wealthy as the SDC, whose influence could be felt all across Remnant, but inside Atlas they were petty kings of their specialty. Insomuch as any company could be called first-tier, they were those companies. Marigold Company had always been ambitious since my never-met father took over, but they'd always fallen way short of those crowns. After Blossom and the military contracts, the company had attracted attention. After Sepal, though? People were starting to think it might be the next corporation to make it into that rarefied circle, and now opportunists were rushing to strike up connections before it happened. Weiss was never quite that explicit, of course, and mainly relied on quoting her father. But she made it clear that, while the three other corporate kids might not be particularly fond of me as a person, they'd very likely been ordered by their parents to make nice with the only child of Marigold Company's CEO. I supposed I should be glad my role in the inception of Blossom and Sepal wasn't public knowledge. Bad as it was now, it was far from the worst it could be.
It was a little damning I had to rely on the guidance of my twelve-year-old friend to navigate my own school life, but Weiss had been dealing with this stuff since she could walk while I'd effectively been a hermit until now. Her advice was always useful, so I'd cope with the indignity.
Being in AP classes was the saving grace of the rest of my days. Usually it was the driven kids that ended up in those, with a high proportion of scholarship students. Most of those were talented human children from working-class families, but to my surprise there were a few Faunus as well. Pleiades Academy apparently prided itself on inclusiveness. On paper the Faunus kids were the same as any other students, but in reality they kept to their own table at lunch and everybody else gave them a wide berth even during class. I kept to myself as much as I could, but my first immersion in my age group made it clear keeping a low profile wasn't possible. That ship had sailed. Nearly every student was on Blossom, and every time the Marigold Company logo bloomed on a screen eyes turned to me. Now that Sepal was taking off as well I got complete strangers walking up to me to strike up conversations about the platform and how cool it was, and awesome my mother's company ran it. It would have been easy to get an ego if I'd not remained well aware I'd essentially stolen the concepts from the Old World. Regardless, any notion I'd had of being just another face in the crowd was swiftly rained on.
History was my favourite class, since the novelty of reading about Remnant's past had yet to fade. It still felt like reading a fantasy novel, even the drier bits. The teacher was noticeably younger than her colleagues and quite enthusiastic about her subject, though I had to repress a sigh when three weeks in she announced the largest assignment for the year would be a team project. Paired students – the pairs being of our own making - would make a presentation before the class about subject approved by the teacher, and even as she began talking about deadlines my eyes swept the class. I found Teal Vogel smiling at me, since she'd somehow managed to get placed in AP while vocally being of the opinion that 'studying was for, like, accountants'. If I had to hear another story about how her grandfather had been inspired to make his first airship design by watching a bird in flight, I was going put a revolver into my mouth and squeeze until the pain went away. I pretended not to get the hint and desperately looked for an alternative. There was a pack of girls in the back that were in an odd number, I noted. Five of them, and two pairs had already been made.
The leftover was a freckled redhead looking a little lost, and with the lack of other prospects visible I decided to roll the dice. She couldn't possibly be more tedious than Vogel, right? I rose to my feet and made my way to the still-giggling pack before Vogel could catch up to me, clearing my throat when I got close. Five pairs of eyes turned to me.
"Hi," I said, forcing some cheer. "One of you is without a partner, right?"
"Oh my god, you're Henry Marigold right?" a black-haired girl with a button-nose gasped.
"That's me," I agreed, slightly less cheerful already. "So, you'd be…"
I trailed off, looking at the redhead with a raised eyebrow.
"Ilito- Aaami," she croaked awkwardly, "um, Ilia Amitola."
I felt for her, really. Hadn't exactly been the picture of smoothness at twelve the last time around, and this one hardly counted.
"Ilia," I hummed. "Good. Would you mind partnering up?"
"Me?" she said, sounding surprised.
God, it was a class project no a marriage proposal. She's twelve, Henry, I reminded myself. You were a patchwork of insecurities and awkwardness at twelve.
"I could partner up with you, I'm sure Sabetha won't mind," another girl said, this one a curly-haired blond.
From the look Button-Nose shot her, Sabetha did in fact mind. I needed to get this done before Vogel could barrel into the conversation and leave me no polite way to refuse, so I valiantly pressed on.
"Come on, Ilian," I said. "There's a list of suggested subjects on the class interface. We can check it out."
"It's Ilia," she reminded me, but didn't actually decline the implied partnerhood.
Eh, it'd do. I had my socially acceptable shield. I stepped back towards my desk terminal and Ilia followed after a heartbeat. I consciously forced myself to ignore the hushed whispers that started among the girls speculating about whether or not I had a crush on this complete stranger I'd dragooned into project-sharing. I half expected Teal Vogel to accost me at that point, but a quick look around told me she was actually chatting with another student. Huh, so she could take a hint. Sometimes. She met my gaze and I inclined my head in appreciation, to a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Giving me my space was the kind of behaviour I wanted to encourage. If she managed to learn that one lessons, she was already pulling ahead of the rest.
"So you're Henry Marigold," Ilia said, sounding adorably awkward.
Ah, I'd been sitting at the desk in silence for like ten seconds now. I could see how that would leave her at a bit of a loss.
"Henry's quite enough," I said. "Sit down. Anything you're interested in?"
A few touches had the suggested subject list projected – ah, Atlesian technology, how did I ever live without you – and she leaned forward to look through after claiming the seat to my right. She had blue-grey eyes, I saw, quite strikingly clear. She was looking a bit gangly at the moment in the Pleiades uniform, but she'd probably be a looker when she grew up. I dismissed the thought in time to catch her reply.
"Nothing really jumps out," she admitted.
"Yeah. It's a little heavy on the Atlesian pioneering spirit, isn't it?" I said with a smile.
The subjects varied from the earliest settlement of Solitas, the continent Atlas was on, to the era called the Unification – when all the fledgling towns and cities had been assembled under the Kingdom of Mantle. It then carefully skipped the Great War and went straight to the Rising Decades in their wake and the booms that came with them. It wasn't sweeping away the less glorious parts of Atlesian history so much as shining the spotlight on the good, but it was pretty telling even in a high-brow prep school we were getting this sort of stuff. Bad emotions attracted the Grimm, huh. Governments in the Old World had used propaganda a hundred times as blatant without half so good an excuse.
"Not that there's anything wrong with that," Ilia said.
"Not the most interesting stuff, though," I replied. "Well, it's not like we need to pick today. We still have a month. Tell you what, our next class is in two days. Let's each have an idea by then and settle on one then."
She bobbed her head in agreement, tiny gangly thing that she was. She hesitated after, and I decided to put her out of her misery.
"You don't need to keep me company if you don't want to," I smiled. "We've got a free fifteen minutes, and it looks like your friends are chatting."
That the talking girls occasionally shot us less-than-discreet look was something I decided to ignore for the moment. Ilia looked grateful, then somewhat guilty about that, but she made her way back to the pack before long. I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes and pondered how much it would cost me to talk one of the upperclassmen into buying me a pack of cigarettes.
XXX
Two months later the general strike was still going strong and the rhetoric was, as I had predicted, escalating accordingly. Forced deportation was now the remedy being thrown around by commentators on the news, never mind that it was an open breach of the Vytal Treaty. Ilia had turned out to be surprisingly decent company when she wasn't tripping over her own tongue, and as the shyness retreated an appreciably sharp sense of humour was coming out. She'd suggested the Anima Accords as our subject, to my surprise. It was the name colloquially given to the terms settled through half a dozen conferences in the wake of Faunus Rights Rebellion, when the Councils met with Faunus leadership and hashed out measures to ensure equals rights. It was an interesting bit of history, and more than a little relevant at the moment, so I jumped on board without hesitation. Ilia herself grew on me as we began meeting up in free periods to get the project going. She was a scholarship student, originally from Mantle, and lived in the Pleiades dorms I hadn't actually known existed. Made sense, though. Living in Atlas City wasn't cheap, and families that could afford it didn't get scholarships.
"It's how I met my friends," she explained. "They're all regular attendees, but from Mantle as well so they applied for the dormitories. I share a room with Julienne and Sabetha, and they've known the others since they were kids."
I genuinely could not remember which one was Julienne, no matter how much she reminded me. In all fairness, I wasn't trying all that hard.
"So what do your parents do?" I asked.
"Oh, you know," she said nervously. "Regular jobs. They're not really interesting."
Ah, I thought. I supposed she would be uncomfortable talking about her working-class family around the son of one of the richest women in Atlas. Better let that sleeping dog lie from now on. I brought up the holographic interface as a transparent way of changing the subject, our presentation outline and assorted sources already set up.
"We could probably get this done with an afternoon's work," I mused. "Get the text written, then time the speaking parts so we don't lose marks for going on too long."
The freckled girl hid a smirk, but not quickly enough I didn't notice.
"What?" I asked.
"You're just, uh, very well organized," she said.
Huh. I supposed I was starting out with the skills presentations like this were supposed to teach us, so in that sense I was ahead of the curve.
"Is that so horrible?" I said.
She laughed.
"No, it's just that you should hear-," she hesitated. "Nothing."
"Amitola, if you start gossiping with me you're not backing out halfway through," I told her amusedly.
She shrugged.
"Oh, he's so mysterious," she mocked in a falsetto voice. "So brooding."
"I don't brood," I said, mildly offended.
"Yeah, I get that now," she snorted. "It's just the way your face is."
"Now you're mocking me," I sighed.
"I would never," Ilia grinned, hand over heart.
It was probably some kind of mental defect, I mused, that had me systematically seeking out the company of people who made fun of me. Well, it was still better than the bumbling version of the girl I'd first met. She'd made me wince in sympathy every two minutes.
"Anyway," I firmly said, "tell me when you have a day free and you can come over for an afternoon to wrap this up."
She blinked.
"I don't know the way," Ilia reminded me.
"I'll come pick you up," I told her.
I could see on her face the exact moment where she remembered I was rich, and that was probably the moment I first started counting her a friend.
