27 Party System

It turns out I could make parties—and, yes, I really did name it Team Jaune. I'm the only one who can name it, which means I get to name it whatever I wanted, and I wanted Team Jaune. Really, Adam's just lucky I didn't name it something embarrassing.

"Invite Adam," I said clearly, a blue window suddenly appearing before the Faunus. He stared at it hard for a long minute before looking up at me as if to say 'really?' He still accepted, though, and thus was my first party made.

"What exactly is this supposed to accomplish?" He asked afterwards.

"It's mainly just to check to see if it works and what it does," I replied. "Let's see, first…Observe."

I brought up Adam's Status Screen and…well…

The dude was a monster, even for level forty-two. I mean, holy crap, if you add in the passive and active effects of Aura, all of his physical stats were over three digits, and closer to two hundred then not. I guess that's the type of thing you get when you're over level forty. Even if it had taken a lot out of him and half a minute to charge, he had hit that Nevermore hard enough to do the equivalent of hundreds and hundreds of my own strikes in one attack.

I guess even now I still have a long way to go, huh?

"Can you see this?" I asked, gesturing at the screen and then called up my Status Screen. "Or this?"

"No," Adam said turning his head to look in that general direction, though he was off a few feet. "What are they?"

"I used my skill Observe to look at your status screen and pulled up my own," I explained. "But I guess you can't see it. Anything above my head?"

Adam glanced up and shook his head.

"Hm…" I said, frowning slightly. "Then…say 'Status Window.'"

"Status Window," He said, starting slightly when one appeared in front of him. "Huh. So this is really how you see the world, huh?"

"Yeah, pretty much," I said. "When I want too, at least."

"All my stats are numbered and everything," He said, shaking his head slightly. I watched as he seemed to go down the list, occasionally nodding, titling his head to the side, or sighing. "I guess that makes sense. I'll keep these in mind while I'm training."

"Before that, though," I said. "Do you have an Inventory?"

He repeated the word but nothing appeared.

"Doesn't seem like it," He said, looking around.

"See if you can do anything with this, then," I reached into my own Inventory and drew out one of my spare skill books on driving. I tossed it to Adam, who caught it easy and appeared to wait for a second. I didn't see anything appear and it didn't seem like he did, either.

A part of me, an admittedly selfish and fairly large part, felt relieved at that, simply because if creating a party had given him those powers, then given his existing skills and his level, I would be…

But on the other hand, it would have made this mission a breeze. I couldn't say I was upset that I couldn't give away the, well, the one thing that made me special, but I was aware of the situation as well. But if none of this worked, then…

"Interesting as it was to see my own stats," Adam began. "Making a party really doesn't seem to do much."

"Hold on a second," I said, frowning as I considered the possibilities. No, not possibilities—what I wanted were… "Party Options."

A new window appeared, with Adam's name filling one of the empty slots, along with the basic stuff like his HP, MP, and level. Below the slots were buttons for 'Settings,' 'Kick,' and 'Promote to Leader;' I had no interest in either of the latter, so I went to Settings. A glance at the options listed found me what I wanted and I tried to turn on 'Equal Distribution.'

Equal distribution is not possible if your level difference is greater than 10.

"Tch," I huffed. When I saw Adam, obviously with no clue what was going on, I explained. "I pulled up the option menu for our party and tried to turn on Equal Distribution so we'd each get half the experience from what we kill, but it says we can't do that if there's more than ten levels between us. I can't use it with Blake, either…stupid game balance."

I sighed.

"Well, there goes that plan."

"Plan?" Adam asked, tilting his head slightly before abruptly frowning. "Wait. Were you going to make me do all the work?"

"What?" I asked, scandalized. "No, no I would never—yes."

"And you were going to force me to fight a lot monsters while you…what? Stayed completely safe in the background and drank tea?"

"Are you kidding?" I asked. "I'd have provided emotional support. 'Go, Adam! Kill another thousand! You can do it!' That kind of thing."

"Oh, gee," He said. "So sad that plan got ruined."

I chuckled.

"Yeah, well, me too," I said. "I guess now we have to go back to the original plan—I'll get into a lot of fights and you make sure to keep me nice and safe."

Adam grunted with displeasure.

"Hey, look on the Brightside," I shrugged, smiling. "You can probably get experience; if equal distribution was an option, you should get the normal amount when you kill Grimm on your own, exception that proves the rule and all. Given how high-leveled you are, you probably won't get much out of it, though, so save them for me unless you have to step in."

Adam grunted with what could have been either more or less displeasure, but I ignored him this time.

"I have to wonder, though…if there's one for parties…" I pursed my lips. "Options."

I laughed loudly when a window appeared.

"Holy crap, I have an Options Menu, Adam," I chuckled. "Let's see…'Gameplay,' 'Video,' 'Sound'…oh God."

I kept laughing as I looked over Gameplay. There wasn't a difficulty setting or anything like that, which was a little sad, but I guess there were limits even to powers as crazy as mine. However…

"Adam, say something," I demanded suddenly.

"What?"

I turned away from him, laughing my head off.

"I have subtitles," I managed to get out through my cackles.

"Seriously?" Adam said, sighing again, but I was busy bobbing my head to something only I could hear.

"Music, too," I said. "I guess it was on mute. It's not bad, though. Hm, but…yeah, I think I'll get tired of hearing it constantly. You ever get tired of the music in a game after thirty hours or so? Like that, but for me it would never stop. Could be useful, though. Subtitles, too, if it works on whispers and stuff. I wonder if my controls are in here somewhere? Could I make myself left-handed or something? Oh, or is there a third person option, maybe?"

"Jaune," Adam interrupted me before I could get too wrapped up in playing with my power. "Focus please."

I frowned at him but fixed my settings and closed the windows.

"Fine, fine, ruin my fun," I said, stretching slightly to get more comfortable in my armor. "Anyway, it's more limited then I might have hoped, but the party system is still pretty useful. Once I get strong enough, Blake and I can train together until we're close to your level, and then we can all benefit from it. Despite what you said, once we're all that strong farming Nevermore shouldn't be too horrible, right? I'll make a contract with an Air Elemental soon, I should be able to ground the Nevermore more easily. If Blake and I run interference, buying you time to charge shouldn't be a problem and if I get inside the Nevermore again, I should be able to just charge up a Magic Missile and poke a few holes in it. If Blake goes for the eyes and helps run it around, it shouldn't be too hard to take it one on three, even if it's higher leveled. If it had more attack variety, that'd be one thing, but this is what happens when you've only got a few options, I guess. The Bigger they are—"

"Jaune," Adam stopped my rambling again, what was visible of his expression looking a tad grim.

I looked away, a part of me wishing I had let go of the jovial atmosphere from before. I already knew what he was getting at. These were all long-term plans; even if I could fight Grimm regularly and trained as much as I could, I knew it would take a long time before I was at a high enough level for such a thing to be feasible. Depending on precisely how much this mission went to hell, I might level up enough to partner with Blake, but getting up to level thirty-two was going to be a pain, I was sure. And this mission…it was getting closer all the time. Even accounting for the travel time and any delays that might occur, it would be over one way or another within two weeks.

And the sad part was that Adam and Blake were the closest things I'd had to friends since I'd been unable to follow my older friends to combat school. Not only that, but I'd told them both my secret and here they were making me as strong as they could. They had their own reasons for doing that, granted, and they were going to drag me into a world of danger now, but…it was also a fact that I wouldn't be this strong without them and I didn't regret helping them yet.

However, when this was over…

"What are you going to do after we save them?" I asked, looking up at the sky. The night sky, I realized after a second; it was hard to tell with my mask and I hadn't even noticed the world getting darker.

"A bit early to talk like our victory's sure."

"You're right," I said, nodding without looking at him. "What are you going to do after this is over, assuming we don't die horribly at any of the dozens of times when we could."

Adam let out a chuckle but it died young.

"The same as before, I suppose."

"You don't think this will change anything?" I guessed, sighing.

"I think it'll change a great deal," He said. "I think it will save or improve the lives of many Faunus. I believe it will give hope to countless more. And I believe that's enough, or else I wouldn't be here. But do I think that this will change how the entire world treats us? That it will change the way those companies treat us? No."

"Because they don't care?" I said, remembering what he'd told me before.

"Because they don't care," He nodded. "But more than that, because they care more about other things. I'm sure countless people would find the actions of the Schnee Company and others like them horrible if you shoved it in their faces. But it's all but a world away, out of sight and out of mind with no effect on their lives except in a positive sense. People will speak about how horrible the treatment of the Faunus on TV and online and too each other, but what will they do? What can they do? In the end, I believe that, on the whole, people—and I mean people, whether Human or Faunus—will do whatever makes their lives easier and better, just as companies will do whatever makes them the most profit."

He sighed deeply and seemed tired.

"And that's the problem. I told you before that I don't think most people hate Faunus; I'll extend that now. I don't even think most of the Schnee Company hates Faunus. I don't even know if I believe the people in charge of it hate Faunus. In fact, I think that if there was a way to make even more money that didn't involve the Faunus, the company would likely switch to that method in short order. Even on Atlas where the entire system seems set against the Faunus and where we're hated the most, I think that's mostly because the system was designed around it being profitable. And the fact of the matter, the reasons why the peaceful protests and everything that was tried before didn't and won't work, is that they're right."

I listened quietly, a little surprised Adam was actually opening up about this. But I guess it must have been a sore subject for him—and maybe it was something he wanted to say while Blake wasn't around.

"Take the Schnee Company, for instance, since that's who we're up against. For so long, the White Fang attempted rallies, boycotts, but what did they hope to achieve? What did they expect a boycott to do? Sure, the Schnee Company has its fingers in every pie, but in the end, their main product is Dust. Did they expect people to stop using Dust? When their homes are powered by it? When the food they eat is planted, grown, harvested, and made with machines that use it? When they drive in cars fueled by it, on roads made with its aid? When they can only even have that because they live in a place where the Grimm were thrown back thanks to it? Even the White Fang uses Dust, we just steal it sometimes instead of buying it. How do you boycott their product when everything is made with their product? And if you could, would you want to?"

"No," I said, only because he paused long enough that I figured he expected a reply. "Life before Dust was…"

"Exactly. But then, what does it matter if you gather into crowds and hold up signs if, in the end, you're still giving them all your money? That's not going to stop anything, it's just going to be an annoying change in ambiance. That was the issue with the White Fang before—it didn't understand how things worked, not really. It tried it on a small scale and sometimes, yeah, sometimes it worked. But…restaurants that don't serve Faunus are a tiny symptom, at best, a product of larger factors, and such methods aren't going to work on groups that can ignore you out right. The fact of the matter is that the only way you're going to make people stop abusing Faunus is if you make it unprofitable, unacceptable, and inconvenient."

"That's why the White Fang turned to violence," I said, understanding. "As another way of increasing the cost of business. Places that didn't serve Faunus were faced with greater costs for rejecting them, so they let them in. Stealing and destroying the products of places that abused Faunus employees, raising costs. Because if the cost of doing business that way gets too high, people will find a different method."

"Yes," Adam nodded. "All the protests in the world won't change companies like the Schnee, because you can say they're methods are horrible and immoral and heartless, but it doesn't matter unless you can say they don't work or that there's a way that'd work better. And you can say the White Fang's actions are awful and terrifying, but you can't say they haven't worked, either. People do treat Faunus better because of us."

"Because they fear you, not because they respect you," I said. "Wouldn't it be better if they changed because they wanted to? Because they believed you were truly their equals?"

"Yes," He said immediately. "But it's better than not being treated equally at all. People have treated us like animals for as long as anyone can remember. They tried to cast us out and lock us up in a place they even named Menagerie. We fought a War until we were promised equality and still didn't get it. Being treated equally because people thought we should be would be ideal—but it hasn't happened yet and history suggests it won't happen any time soon. The White Fang…it's not a perfect solution, but it's the one we've got. What would you have done, if you'd been born a Faunus?"

I thought about it silently for several long seconds before closing my eyes with a sigh.

"I don't know," I said, shaking my head. "I'd like to think I'd be able to find another way, but nothing springs to mind right now. But…I'd probably fight, if I could. If it was my family being treated that way, my friends, my people…I'd fight, like my parents would fight."

Adam just nodded easily.

"Blake wants to help people and she wants to change the White Fang," Adam said easily, like he'd known all along—which he probably had, actually. "She wants to find another way, a peaceful way, too set an example for others to follow and believe in. Even if she hates what humans do, she doesn't want to hurt them, either. And I'm glad that despite everything, she can still hold onto that. I respect her for having beliefs and sticking to them and all the more so for those beliefs to be kind in a world that makes it so easy to be cruel. But I can't believe in what she does. I just don't think it will work. I think that the only way things will truly change is if we fight."

I wasn't sure what to say to that, so I just nodded.

"When this is over," I said. "I'll probably do the same thing as before, too. I want to get stronger. I'm going to become a Huntsman and protect people, Human and Faunus alike. That's why I'm here on this mission and…even if our paths diverge from here on, I'm glad I got to be friends with you, Blake, and Tukson—and I don't want to stop being friends just because we walk different paths. I'm glad that I could just talk about this with all of you, to have chance to understand. And I…while I can't refute what you said and I can't think of a solution yet, I want to. So I'll keep looking for a way, even if it's naïve. Even if it seems hopeless, I'll fight for it as well. With my power…I'll get smarter and wiser and even luckier, until I can find a way. Even if there's a fight or a war, I'll…"

Adam smiled at me, tilting his head slightly my way.

"You'll need to be a lot stronger then you are now if you want to do something like that, idiot," He said, ruining both my cool speech and the moment.

"That's why I'm training, dumbass," I replied, shaking my head and muttering under my breath.

"You're not training right now," Adam pointed out. "If you really want to get stronger, then get to work. I still owe you for that ride in the Bullhead."

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