Animals were the bane of Blake's existence in countless ways. She didn't particularly hate them, per say, but, she didn't love them either. She merely didn't understand how any animal would want to subject themselves to the unfortunate realities of having an owner...no matter how loving that owner was...enter her teammates, three humans who turned into piles of cooing mush if a dog so much cocked its head to the side the right way.
To say Blake thought the whole matter idiotic was the understatement of the century.
Beacon had a fairly strict no pet policy. It had gotten flagrantly disregarded when Zewi found himself a happily welcomed into the dorm room. His two owners, and the swooning heiress made sure of that. Blake, never really fond of animals in the first place, tolerated the creature to the best of her sanity. Thinking she was done with strange new mongrels was merely wishful thinking.
In their third year of Beacon, Yang had brought home the tiniest little ball of multicolored fluff that Blake had ever seen.
Cat Faunus or not, she held no sympathy for the little stowaway. Blake had tried to oppose the idea of keeping the kitten around, but, as always, the vote in favor of the kitten meant Blake had to put up with it. Over the years she had gotten used to, and even tolerated that the cat in question had taken a liking to her…though, she still could not say she felt any sort of positive emotion in return.
"Yang…get your cat out of my library."
"He likes you."
"Well, I don't like him." Blake sighed, toeing the creature off of the window seat that she favored. All she wanted was some alone time. With the cat around, she couldn't even have that. He hopped back up, twirling around in a circle before laying back down. "…and now he's purring again." She really, really, wanted to push him off again, but the cat was nothing if not persistent.
"I'll have Ruby come get him. Coco and her army just got here." Yang said, panning the scroll to the driveway. The entire Adel family poured out of the luxury limozeen. Coco, Velvet, Fox, and finally their many offspring, starting with the eldest, and only distinctly human child. The rest of them were surely Faunus. "Geez, Fox is a busy guy, I'll give him that…"
"If I knew they'd be arriving, I would have come out to greet them." Blake said, closing her book and beginning down the large and long hallways. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Weiss told me not to bother you."
"Well, I've been bothered, and now I'm on my way." Blake's long and elegant strides were not enough to get the cat to leave her alone. Together with the annoying creature, she finally made it to the front door, where Yang promptly scooped up her companion to keep him out of Blake's way. "Hello everyone, long time, no see."
"No kidding." Velvet said, embracing her long-time friend. "It's so good to see you, Blake. We really need to do get-togethers more often."
"Work's been difficult." She said, embracing Coco and Fox in equal measure. By scent, she could tell Velvet was carrying, but she had no way of knowing the gender, or how many. For as jealous as she was, a bright smile graced her lips. "Summer litter, huh? Well, they are more plentiful."
Fox had the decency to cough into his hand bashfully.
"We know, we know." Coco said with a roll of her eyes, though she too sported a happy smirk. "This is what I get for going missing for the first month of fall. I really need to learn to keep my schedule open."
"Could've fooled me." Blake teased. "I'd always thought it was Velvet's fault."
The rabbit Faunus in question actually looked shy about the whole ordeal. "Well…you know how it is."
Blake's smile fell, but only a little bit. "Yeah, I do…if it were up to me, I'd be on my second or third as well by now."
"You heard your girl, Weiss." Coco chided as she peered over her dark rimmed glasses. "Get to it."
"Get to what, mom?" Coco's little girl asked, as her siblings crowded around their parents.
"Get to what caused your brothers and sisters." Coco told her simply, gently moving some ruddy colored bangs from the girl's eyes. She was very much her father's daughter, terrible eyesight included. "So, are Pyrrha and the others here yet?"
"Yes, of course." Weiss turned to Yang. "You and Ruby have babysitting duty. Make sure Pyrrha knows we'll be in the office."
"You got it, boss."
"Yang!"
Blake merely rolled her eyes. "The workaholics strike again." She murmured to Velvet with a shake of her head.
"We'll be lucky to see them before dinner time at this rate." Velvet agreed.
"Well, why don't I show you to your rooms?" Blake offered, flagging down a few of the maids and the head butler to help with all the luggage. "The east courtyard should be big enough."
"This is always such a pain in the butt." Fox murmured quietly as the two youngest of the children stayed behind from the rest. Without delay, he hoisted both of them up into his shoulders. "I keep telling Coco that we've starting to become a nuisance, but she doesn't believe a word I say…"
"Nuisance?" Blake asked, honestly surprised.
"Never mind him, Blake. He still thinks that we make matters too difficult on our hosts." Velvet explained, giving Blake a small smile. "As much as I try to tell him otherwise, Fox still worries."
"It's not that I worry, it's that we've become a ridiculously large family." He replied dully, trying to follow Blake and Velvet through the unfamiliar passageway. It took time to commit to memory what his senses failed to tell him. "It's an imposition."
"Fox, please swear to me you'll never say that to Weiss. Knowing her, she'd take offense and try to add another wing, and it's big enough as it is." Blake stopped, at the hallway. "All of these guestrooms are free. Use as many as you need."
"We'll only need two." Velvet said with a tiny little smile. "The little ones are still co-sleeping with us, and the rest of them put up a fuss as soon as we try to separate them. I think they're still too young, really. I wasn't separated from my siblings until I was eight. I keep trying to explain to them that it's just Faunus nature, but, you know Coco."
"Faunus nature?" The blonde male coming down the hall parroted. "I think it's just a twin thing. My girls do it too, and so did my sisters when we were growing up." Jaune stifled a laugh as he came by to greet the newest arrivals. "Velvet, Fox, it's great to see you both. You'll have to excuse Pyrrha. Yang said something about some sort of meeting, and then I lost tract of her."
Blake only shook her head once more. "I hate when they do that…"
"Never mind dinner..." Velvet lamented right along with her. "We'll see them next week."
They were workaholics, but, they were also smart enough to know that long hours behind closed doors upset their spouses. They tried to do it as little as possible, which meant when they did do it, they were gone quite a long time.
The three most powerful women in the corporate world sat at the roundtable. Friends, and allies first and foremost, together they held enough clout to make even world leaders take notice. The Schnee Dust Company was perhaps the longest running, but it didn't stand alone. Coco Adel came from a long line of sailors, and the Adel Shipping Company was well known when it came to the transfer of goods and services. Pyrrha was perhaps the newest blood among them, her family's small fortune meager when compared to the two corporate giants in front of her.
Still, when it came to stock and investment deals, Pyrrha was as shrewd as they came.
Having grown up under public scrutiny, she understood the civilian market better than anyone else. Ever since her appearance on cereal boxes everywhere, she had been exposed to the system. She knew where to place her bets, striking while the iron was hotter than a furnace. With Pyrrha now representing both of their companies in the arena, it wasn't an understatement to say she had turned into quite the public figurehead. A spokesperson for two very powerful, pragmatic, and pig-headed business leaders.
Pyrrha doubted that Weiss or Coco could relate to the general public even when they tried. That was the price of being born into such large fortunes, so Pyrrha took it upon herself to help them maintain respectable images.
"I must say, Weiss, your wife surprises me more often than not. I still can't believe she didn't want the policy change." Coco replied, clicking her pen over and over again. She leaned back in the all too comfortable leather chair. "Blake's been gunning for Faunus rights ever since I've known her. We've even had all of the best lawyers involved in this one, and for her to shoot it down too…it's harsh."
"She may be right though." Pyrrha sighed. "Atlas is behind the times quite a bit."
"Change begins with those who can afford the risk." Weiss had long concluded that. "Early adopters of reform do it because they don't mind taking the chance. If she wants Atlas to change, starting in-house is as good a method as any."
"Except, of course, when you take into account that the Schnee Dust Company is still under fire for the last policy change you passed." Coco said, knowing that the recent changes to wages bumped up the average minimum wage across the company. The rest of Atlas took notice, and it had made an uproar. "I'll have you know, my employees were a little pissed about that. Said I didn't pay them enough."
"I only raised the wages on the blue collar workforce." Weiss protested with a wave of her hand. "They're one ones risking their lives in the dust mines. Not to mention that they spend time breaking their backs in manufacturing. I had to do something."
"That might be true, but you should have heard the way my guys pissed and moaned about it." Coco smirked in spite of it. "Not that I care. It's not like they don't already reap the rewards of working for me. I'm not going to try to match your every lien. Just keep that in mind when you start throwing lien around like confetti."
"You could afford it." Weiss shot back, sharing that tiny grin. "If they hassle you, it's your fault." Even as friends and partners, they were competitive when it came to the bottom line.
"So, what's your next move going to be, Weiss?" Pyrrha asked gently. "Another slogan change in the arena, or otherwise?"
"I'm going to start my family, that's what." Weiss replied after a few moment. "Blake's hesitating for the company's own wellbeing, but that does nothing for her. We need these policies passed before I step down. I realize that's still several decades down the line at least, but this is only the beginning. I don't have time to twiddle my fingers, and I don't think Blake understands that. Our children are going to be labeled Faunus, and that's a game changer. I've been trying to set up a good foundation to build off of before we started having children, but, perhaps that's what's actually making Blake hesitate."
"With all due respect, I think Yang's exuberance might be rubbing off of you." Coco said slowly. "You do need an heir, I don't doubt that…but I hardly see how that might get Blake to start taking more risks in the company."
"For the exact same reason our parents took risks." Weiss replied pointedly, giving Coco a dark look. Neither one of them had normal relationships by any means. It was worth pointing out. "Our backers weren't pleased that I took Blake for a wife, but they got over it when they saw the new rise in sales. Suddenly, that I was sleeping with a woman didn't matter…her heritage however…" Weiss sighed deeply. "I need Blake to want to push herself into a symbol of status. I need her to want to set a precedent that my heir can piggyback on. It's hard enough trying to earn respect in a company this size, without having to be discriminated against on top of it."
"And therein rests the problem with getting married to commoners." Coco laughed. "They're always more interested in the domestics, not the corporate politics."
"She used to be...that's what's driving me crazy." Weiss sighed.
"Her caution holds merit though." Pyrrha reminded them gently. "We three sit here, privileged, you two sit without reasonable rivals in your respective fields...but as we have started to see, that might change. Blake's right to worry, and I think she's acting as political as ever. Sometimes, that means sitting on your hands and playing the waiting game. I know that doesn't correlate to either of your personalities, but sometimes, it's the right choice."