Author's Notes
Happy Happy Spooktober Christmas! Enjoy this not-at-all themed chapter of Job Security as a prize.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 15 – Saboteuse
The trip from the SDC back to Vale might be through cold, snow-capped mountains, but that doesn't stop tempers from burning out of control.
It was disappointing to see how easily Jaune Arc folded. All it took was a few fellow humans offering him a nice contract, and he was content to side with the SDC over his own partner.
This accursed mission of theirs, he just couldn't wrap his head around the concept that it wasn't some minor thing. If they helped the SDC, they were contributing to evil. Perhaps it was in a minor way, and perhaps it was in an unavoidable way, but Jaune and Blake were siding with the tormentors of her people.
This isn't what huntresses do. This isn't what I made Team Job to do.
Jaune clearly thought he was innocent simply because he said he didn't like it, but Blake knew better. It was so common for humans to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they had no choice.
Ohhh, I need Dust, and I can't spare a few lien to buy a better brand, so SDC it is! After all, it's not like my minor contribution to slavery is really going to matter for a multi-trillion lien company.
And when millions of people say that, the numbers add up. The same people who criticize the SDC on social media with their hashtags and their likes are the ones that keep it running.
Jaune liked to hide behind his little safety blanket, but he was their advertiser. He had complete control over who they presented themselves to, and the SDC had somehow seen his website and thought that they were the perfect people for a few covert murders. All it would have taken it a few sentences about their ethics, and it would have turned them away, but Jaune couldn't be bothered. Humans rarely ever thought to add the term 'Faunus friendly' when they were marketing.
I thought he was better than this. Now, we're stuck working for these sacks of shit. What if we do a good job and they want to hire us again? Am I going to become Blake Belladonna, hitwoman and financial slave to the Schnees?
No. It didn't matter how, but Blake wasn't going to let that happen. She may have left the White Fang because of Adam, but the White Fang had never left her.
"W-What if we're seen?" Arc asked, trembling like a toddler.
"I just need some air," Blake said. "It's cramped in there, no? I'll be out and back in a few minutes."
"B-But –"
"Jaune, they said that the stagecoach is never attacked on the way in. Until we get to Vale, we basically don't have a job beyond sitting around with our thumbs planted up our asses. We're not yet in the thickest part of the mountains where there's ice and snow, so I can safely walk alongside the stagecoach for a few minutes, then come back in."
Jaune's eyes fell on the lever that let them in or out.
"I'll knock six times, three slow then three fast." Blake nodded at him. "That way you know its me. Just stay inside, or we'll get locked out and have to walk the whole way, okay?"
He clearly wasn't happy about it, but when they weren't in front of a customer, Jaune really had no power to tell her what to do. Blake hopped out and shut the door behind her.
She knew Jaune would be keeping his eyes glued to the viewports outside to see where she was, so she made sure to keep herself close enough to the stagecoach that she remained in its blind spots. It turned out that the SDC fuckface who built it took omnidirectional to mean omnidirectional when at a distance. To be fair, it was effectively the same in the event of an attack unless the enemy could teleport up close instantly, but it was the SDC, so Blake didn't need to be fair here.
When she was sure she was out of Jaune's sight, she hopped up and landed on top of the big box of Dust. It was as though the SDC had done their best to set her up with a perfect opportunity to screw them over. Here Blake was, sitting atop a giant case of explosives that was known to be regularly burgled. Blake wasn't a master of improvising explosive devices, but she knew enough of the basics to at least create a timer using her scroll. Any evidence of it would immediately be destroyed in the blast, and Blake could blame it on the –
"Blake, what are you doing?"
She looked down to see Jaune Arc, shuffling alongside the stagecoach to keep up with it as her looked up at her on the roof of it. The door had a pinecone from off the snowy ground wedge into it to keep it ajar.
"Nothing," she said, slipping off the roof and landing next to him.
"Were you stealing Dust?"
"No, Jaune. Just go back inside."
He looked back up at the see-through Dust vault. "You were breaking the locks on it. I saw you."
"Jaune, I swear to the Brothers, just drop it."
Jaune sucked in a breath. "You were sabotaging it, weren't you?"
Well, she'd actually been planning on destroying it (and probably part of the mining village if there were a way to ensure it was evacuated when the bomb went off), but it was easier to let Jaune think she was just trying to break the stagecoach, so she just nodded.
"Blake, what the heck?! After everything we've gone through, you're –"
"Stop being such a goody-two-shoes, Arc," she snapped. "You've done bad things too, so don't get made at me for the same thing."
"No it's not!" Jaune screamed. Now that they were alone in the forest, there was no need to lower their voices, so he was apparently willing to let out some of the anger that he'd pent up.
That was good; Blake needed to let out some of her bottled up rage too, and if Jaune gave her a free outlet to do so, no one would catch her complaining.
"You don't get to criticize me when you stole that Beacon kid's scroll just two weeks ago, Jaune."
Jaune's eyes flashed in rage, and he bent over and grabbed some snow from the floor. Pressing it up into a ball, he threw it directly into Blake's shirt. Even without her aura raised, Blake barely even felt it hit.
Blake raised an eyebrow. "That's your –"
"Shut up!" Jaune screamed. "Shut up! You don't get to be the hero, Blake! Not now!"
The hero? Does this child think we're in some storybook where the world is black and white?
"Lives are on the line here!" Blake shouted.
"Whose lives?!" Arc looked to his left, then to his right, as though he expected to see someone else in the pine trees around them. "Tell me! Tell me what breaking this stagecoach will actually accomplish, Blake!"
She didn't really have an answer to that – the SDC did cost people their lives, but Blake wasn't so naïve to believe that one sabotaged piece of equipment (or work village) would truly make a difference.
"It's not about the lives!" Blake said, unwilling to back down. "It's about the message! It's the right thing to do!"
"Was it the right thing to do when I stole that scroll from those people at Beacon and risked failing them from graduating?" Jaune yelled. "Was that right? No, but you praised me for it! How come I have to sacrifice my morality every time because we need to do it to survive, but the second you have an opinion, you just have to be the good guy? Er, gal?"
"This is about more than us and our stupid company!"
"It wasn't about more than us when I stole that scroll. It wasn't about more than us when we lied to the people of Lemuria for a job. It wasn't about more than us when we snuck into Beacon. Why is it only your opinion that matters? Why don't you have to sacrifice for the partnership?"
He was…oh, Blake had had it with this human. A spoiled child who thought he was owed a free seat at Beacon without ever having to earn it deciding to lecture her on sacrifice? Blake didn't think so.
Scooping up some snow and crunching it down to a sphere within her hands, Blake hurled it right into Jaune's face. She could sort of see why he did it; there was no risk or danger, but it felt pretty damn good to just let some of that anger out.
"Don't talk to me like you know anything! You keep saying that you're aware of how bad the SDC is, but are you? Do you truly actually know anything aside from 'snowflake bad,' or is it just lip service?"
Jaune opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. Just like she'd thought, he said he was a good person, but he couldn't be bothered to actually put in any effort into doing anything good. She wasn't going to say that the White Fang was a charity or something, but at least they'd taken action to change the world. Horrible actions, no doubt, but action when no one else was willing.
Because we…because they knew that the world would never change unless someone changed it. It doesn't matter to them how far they sink, because life is so bad for some Faunus that there's no way it could get worse.
"Let me tell you, then," Blake said, seething with rage in spite of her calm tone. Arc now had fear in his eyes, and they kept daring down to Blake's waist for some reason, but she was too incensed to care about his ogling. "The SDC and the Schnees see the Faunus as cheap, disposable labor. I mean that in every way – to them, us Faunus are slaves that get a meager paycheck to make it technically legal, even though that paycheck is significantly below minimum wage. Humans are well paid in that damn Dust company, but Faunus get barely anything for their work, and the SDC gets away with it because they know that the Faunus have no alternative. Well, they have one alternative, which is to give up on the only job they can get and become destitute and homeless.
"People always say it's payment for the quality of their work, but if that were so, those poor Faunus should be getting compensated like kings. The human managers risk nothing and sit in their fancy chairs in their fancy offices, typing all day, but the Faunus who work the mines and operate the equipment have the worst jobs in their company…in the world! They're regularly asked to risk their lives on a whim, and the humans who do it do it on a whim, like they wouldn't even be bothered if their Faunus slaves actually died – and they wouldn't! Because unlike slavery, they can just open a job posting and get some other poor schmuck off the street with no prospects to fill the role. It's demeaning, and it's insulting, and it's downright vile! The Faunus aren't cared about; their species is all that matters to their bosses because it makes them replaceable. The humans, when they hold even the tiniest amount of power over the Faunus, they immediately see them as no more than objects, objects to be squeezed dry and…and…"
It took saying it out loud for Blake to actually hear it.
Fuck. I just handed Arc an easy win. If he wants to shut me down, he doesn't even have to work for it.
But Jaune didn't capitalize on Blake's mistake. Instead, he just froze up and stared at her like he was a deer Faunus in the headlights.
"I…I…"
Blake forced herself to pull the hand she hadn't even realized was on Gambol Shroud off of it. Brushing some falling flakes of snow out of her hair, she just stood there in the snow among the pine trees. They were on the verge of what truly constituted the mountains now, and the stagecoach had gotten significantly ahead of them when they'd stopped walking to have their little spat.
"Let's just finish this job and go home," Blake said. "We don't want to lose our ride."
Neither of them really felt like being around the other, certainly not in that tiny, cramped space that had been built for them, so Blake sat on top of the stagecoach while Jaune trudged through the snow alongside it, loud crunches coming from beneath his shoes. She'd offered for them to switch spots, a perfunctory gesture as best, but he'd lacked the nimbleness to climb up, and he'd fallen off the second the machine reached some rocky terrain, so it was back to the ground for him.
When they reached the part of the journey where walking would be too difficult and sitting atop the stagecoach would be too dangerous, they'd had no choice but to retreat into their tiny little cabin once again. Doing anything else would be unsafe.
Neither of them could meet the other's eyes for the entire rest of the journey to Vale. When the walls of the city came into view, promising surefire safety from a bandit ambush, the two fake hunters exited their enclosure and watched the proceedings.
The stagecoach reached some sort of train-station-like area at the edge of the city where an automated crane that was perched on the walls reached down, removed the valuable Dust payload (that Blake left untainted), and replaced it with a preloaded box of food and other such supplies. Blake could make out several recognizable items – boxes of foods to augment the SDC's onsite farms, manufactured goods like rope, nails, and metal sheets that couldn't be produced at the village, and a bright shiny stack of lien chips at the top of the pile.
It was in thousand lien denominations, so the entire stack was probably no bigger than a desktop computer laid down on its side. So much trouble over something so small…it was almost bizarre to think about.
But wasn't that how the whole world worked? Money made the world go round. It was because of tiny chips of lien that the SDC chose to enslave Blake's people, and it was because of lien that the Faunus ever had anything to do with a company that despised the very ground they walked on. So much of human and Faunus culture was engraved in economics and finances that it seemed all but impossible to imagine a life without it. Money was a sin and a vice according to some, but it was money that gave you food, shelter, and other necessities.
And it was because of money that Blake had become the SDC.
I'm not being fair here. It wasn't just money. It was money, ego, and power.
Jacques Schnee and his company paid the Faunus as little as they could. They lorded their power over them and made them perform demeaning, sometimes life-threatening work for a barely livable wage, and when the Faunus ever tried to speak up for themselves, their opinions were categorically ignored, dismissed, or discredited.
Blake desperately tried to find an aspect of her interactions with Jaune where she hadn't done the exact same thing, but she utterly failed to.
I took advantage of him when he was vulnerable after being kicked out of Beacon all because he had a check in his hand that I wanted. I left him to die outside Lemuria, and I only went back to save him because I needed to. And then, to make it worse, I tried my best to keep the reward for myself and keep the truth away from Arc as long as possible. I would have had him believe I was his savior forever if he hadn't figured it out for himself.
And I just kept doing it. I made him the advertiser because I was better suited for being in control, but I can't help but admit it was kind of a rush to be the one in charge. I had to learn business, and I could have let Arc do it alongside me, but I felt like it was my turn to be in charge. Then, when we went to the Lake of Lost Voles, I humiliated him by treating him as live bait, and I endangered his life in doing so. Fuck, I even shot him!
She hadn't ever meant to hurt her big lug of a partner, but she wondered if the average SDC foreman or upper echelon manager ever truly meant for a cave-in to kill their wage-slaves. No one truly meant for anything bad to happen, but negligence wasn't an excuse. Both parties had knowingly put their employees in a position where they could be in danger, and both tried their very best to act surprised when they actually did get harmed.
Jaune hadn't done anything wrong on this mission, but she'd made up some bullshit about his website advertising to the SDC (even though she'd been the one to order him to change it for a non-Grimm job) and found a reason to be upset with him.
Plus, as much as it was just a word, she often called him human, both verbally and in her head. There was nothing strictly wrong with that, as he was a human, and no one in their right minds would think that 'human' could be considered a slur.
But why had she called him that?
Why had she reduced him to his species when he was a person with so much more to his existence than 'human?'
Blake didn't hate humans. She knew this for a fact, and that wasn't some desperate self-denial. No, the reason she knew it was true was because admitting the actual reason behind her language was even more damning. The reason she'd done it was because she'd gotten a taste of being the dominant force in a power dynamic, and she milked it for everything it had. She was the huntress and Arc was the apprentice, and she knew he needed her, so she could get away with saying whatever she wanted.
Fuck me. I didn't just become the SDC.
I almost became Adam.
Coming Soon: An Eye for Riches
Blake and Jaune discover who's been robbing the SDC stagecoach, but what are they to do with that knowledge?
Author's Notes
As much as I'd like to make this a 'both sides have a point,' I did kinda make Jaune the victim here. Or at least I made Blake's arguments fall apart the second she tries to make them. To be fair, arguments in favor of terrorism don't tend to be particularly strong.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!