Another one from the Free-For-All! This prompt was "The gang discuss a Remnant conspiracy theory."
The weekend before the Vytal Festival Tournament was a quiet one for Team RWBY. It would have been foolish to exhaust themselves so close to the competition, so training was kept light. Weiss wanted to scope out the competition, but her teammates made it clear they planned to spend the homework-free weekend relaxing.
Not wanting to go out and look for information alone, she was stuck looking over the other competitors' online profiles on the official Vytal Festival website. Team RWBY had been interviewed for their own profiles weeks earlier, so Weiss knew how little information the web site would actually provide, but it was better than nothing.
So while Blake read and Yang and Ruby played video games, Weiss was on her scroll sifting through the tiny blurbs of background for each of the dozens of people they might end up fighting in the coming week. She was going through the Shade students when she came to one that made her pause.
"Do any of you know what this means?" Weiss asked. "For his quote, Roy Stallion said 'Don't worry, no one's making an Aura Slave out of me.'"
"It's gotta be a joke," Yang answered. "I doubt he seriously believes in that."
"But what is it?" Weiss pressed.
Ruby glanced at her partner. "You've never heard of Aura Slaves?"
"No, but I'm sure it's something ridiculous," Weiss replied, sounding slightly defensive.
"It's an online conspiracy theory," Blake explained, setting down her book.
"Yeah," Yang added. "Some people think that the Vytal Festival Tournament happens so that the kingdoms can get all the best Huntsmen together and mind control us all."
Weiss grunted disgustedly. "People really believe that?"
"There's all kinds of weirdos online," Ruby said dismissively.
"But that doesn't even make any sense!" Weiss pressed. "They really think that the kingdoms are mind controlling Huntsmen? And why would they even need the tournament for that?"
"It's a conspiracy theory, they never make sense," Yang replied. "Like people who think that Remnant is flat."
"What?" cried Weiss.
"You didn't know about that?" Ruby asked, pausing her game to look at Weiss.
"No!" Weiss practically shouted. "That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. How could anyone possibly believe that Remnant is flat?"
"There are people out there who don't believe a single word that the government says," Blake explained. "I can appreciate the sentiment, but eventually it just gets crazy. If Remnant was flat or if the kingdoms could mind control Huntsmen, somebody would have found out about it by now."
"You can see for yourself that Remnant isn't flat," Weiss insisted. "What do they think the horizon is?"
Her three teammates just shrugged, which only added to Weiss' frustration.
"My favorite are the people who think the moon landing wasn't staged," Ruby commented. Weiss twisted her face in confusion, so Ruby continued. "Yeah, some people think that Atlas successfully landed on the moon."
"Everyone knows that Dust doesn't work in space," Weiss snapped.
"Well no, they kind of don't," Blake countered. "Most people have no way of testing that themselves, and some don't want to take the government's word for it. Again, I can understand not trusting the Atlesian government. But they lose me when they start saying that the old CGI movie about a hypothetical moon landing was actual footage that was edited to look fake."
"Who could possibly believe that?" demanded Weiss.
"You go to the wrong place online, you run into all kinds of weirdos," Yang answered. "Conspiracy theorists, political crazies, perverts, fanfiction writers, the net catches tons of fishy people."
"I think they already existed before the internet," Blake said, ignoring Yang's pun. "It's just that now they have an outlet for their weirdness."
Weiss shook her head and went back to her scroll, her faith in humanity thoroughly shaken.