Apologies for having to abandon the two-week deadline. College is kicking my ass and I'm getting put up for NCO so my leadership has been putting a lot of additional tasks on me. I'll try to keep this going on a monthly basis, and maybe post more as time permits.

As places to wake up went Vale Central hospital had to rate somewhere as average for Jaune. He'd figured it should have rated on the low side, but alive and warm seemed to be his new metric of good enough. The bill he'd received at the end of the day he'd spent there had definitely kept it on the lower side though. As he looked over some paperwork with billing he tried to focus on the fact that he was alive and ok in lieu of the zeros on the paper.

He'd spent a night passed out and had woken up about six hours ago. A tired-looking doctor had briefly told him he'd received a concussion and had been brought in by Vale PD. At first, he'd assumed that Billy had punched his lights out and he'd been found in the alley. A vaguely judgmental comment by the doctor about him being found in a club while downing a bottle of alcohol shot down that idea. Apparently, his body had decided it was a good time to cut loose with a bit of brain damage. It made him wonder if the headache he'd woken to was more of a hangover.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked a gruff nurse as he was wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair. "If I'm well enough to leave aren't I good enough to walk."

"Policy." The nurse replied flatly. "Maybe, not get messed up and you won't have to be wheeled out like a kid."

Ignoring the rude comment and resigning himself to policy, Jaune came back to his own inner thoughts as he passed through various corridors and hallways. Replays of the fight in the alley mostly occupied his time since he regained consciousness. He figured it a better use of time pondering that than how someone trusted to leave couldn't be trusted to walk.

Not like he could think of much else. Every millisecond of his encounter replayed in excruciating detail for his brain to overanalyze. Maybe he should have said something to instill a commanding presence early. Could he have somehow seen the nearby gangs if he'd looked around more? What cues had he missed in figuring the man as Billy? Stupid scenarios that played in his favor through some unrealistic variables mixed with a more realistic understanding of his failings in his brain. It was honestly exhausting. Logically he knew it would pass. It was just his brain's way of processing the stressful situation.

Not that he'd stop thinking about it for a while, but he felt like he'd figured out some places where he definitely could have improved the situation. Overfocusing on the target was one of the mistakes he'd made. He'd had time to case the area and potentially sniff out the gangs if he hadn't been so nervous and thinking more clearly. A lack of subtly also screwed him. He could have possed as a customer and figured out who Billy was. Most importantly he couldn't take his eye off potential enemies, ever.

Jaune didn't have a lot of confidence in himself these days. Failure was practically branded on his forehead in his mind. It had been easy for Billy to see at least. So that made his thoughts concerning to him. He knew he'd been dumb as hell. A mix of overconfidence, nativity, and stupidity had very nearly cost him his life. So, he should be packing up his pocket lint and using his last bills to catch a train out. It was at this point that he should have been marking another mental hash mark on the chalkboard that recorded his many failures.

Currently though? All he could think about was how to come out on top next time. His brain burned through old naiveties and dumb ideas about hunting on the street like a fire. The voice of his failures tried to poke through as they usually did, but he couldn't give it a thought as he accessed and planned.

It all just made him wonder why. Why go forward? Even before he'd been seriously considering running away. He knew he wasn't cut out for this work before he had even started, so why was he preparing to get better?

This is better than hating myself every second. His brain supplied in response.

Before he could ponder the thought more he realized that he had stopped moving. The gruff nurse had stopped to apparently flirt with some other female staff member. He waited a few polite moments and tried to ignore the conversation only to feel that the conversation wouldn't be ending anytime soon.

"Excuse me" He interjected. Jaune didn't exactly have a lot of concrete plans for his day at the moment, but this wasn't exactly it.

"Wait , sir" The nurse said rudely before continuing his conversation.

Jaune had been raised to respect authority, to follow the rules; an upbringing that encouraged not rocking the boat. So of course he waited longer.

Then a bit longer. "I'll just go." he said as he got up.

"Sit down! Policy dictates you have to be wheeled out." The nurse growled.

"Fine" He huffed as he slumped back down.

Satisfied the nurse continued to talk and ignore him.

Feed up with the bullshit Jaune's hands shot into his pockets and pulled out a cig. It wasn't till he lit it did the nurse even realized what he was doing.

"Put that out dickhead!" the man yelled.

He took a drag. "Or what? You gonna kick me out?" he said with a smirk.

"Get out asshole!" the infuriated nurse yelled.

Jaune had just planned to annoy the guy into letting him leave. He'd just accomplished that. Logic said he should have been content, but he wasn't. It was the tone of the nurse; pure anger. Usually, he'd look to get away or defuse the peoples' anger. If his dad yelled at him, fed up with his insistence to be trained, he'd have slunk off. When Cardin got mad at him for being weak he'd try to find some way to appease him. Now though, the man's anger caused him to burn just as hot.

Still sitting in his chair Jaunes reached up and grabbed the man's collar. Aura activated he yanked the nurse to level. "Policy says I'm getting wheeled out like a kid. Now I'm getting wheeled out." He blew smoke into the guy's face causing him to cough. "Cause if I get up, it's gonna be to kick your ass ." he snarled.

Releasing the man he fell back onto the ground. Gone was his anger, instead, his face was awash with terror. The female nurse looked shocked. It wasn't dissimilar to his own expression.

The fuck was that Jaune?

Before he consider his actions more a hearty laugh caught everyone's attention. Looking to the source he was surprised to see officer Dan.

"Shit kid, you can't get into enough fights on the street?" he joked.

The staff eased up at the presence of the law, even if they frowned at the attitude he took. For his part, Jaune took the interruption to compose himself.

"If he'd let me get back to it." he growled in mock annoyance. At first, he'd been about to apologize profusely, but it seemed like his aggressive attitude was somehow admirable to the guy who could arrest him. If that said something about the city's police or if Dan was just generally an asshole, he didn't know.

"That's why I'm here." Dan replied. "We got some business to discuss."

Jaune gulped nervously at what that could have implied. He could be getting arrested for any number of things that had happened yesterday. He really hoped underage drinking was the only thing of note that he had done while he was concussed.

"Let's go to my patrol car." Dan said as he started to walk off.

Getting up to follow Jaune noticed as the male nurse still flinched in fear as he left the chair. Shame flooded him as he walked by. Threatening some random guy was the last thing he thought he'd do.

Maybe he should have done his job a not been an ass. Guy got what was coming. A part of his brain seethed. He pushed it down with the force of shock and guilt as he followed Dan out of the hospital.

"Get in," Dan commanded as he got into a patrol car that was parked outside the hospital exit.

Doing as he was told, he was thankful that he wasn't told to get in the back as he slid into the passenger seat. More stressful was the fact that officer Dan turned off the camera in his car and on his vest as he did.

What have you gotten yourself into Jaune?

"You know you don't get paid if you kill a mark, right?" Dan asked as he pulled the car out of the hospital lot.

"I didn't mean to do that." Jaune said even more nervously than before. Was he going to get blamed for the gang members' deaths?

Dan laughed harder than ever "Holy fuck, you weren't even after them! You're trying to sell me that they just got in your way? I just figured you went for one and got overwhelmed."

"I was after another bounty and those guys showed up." Had the police not figured out what happened, he wondered.

"We IDed those guys and they were rival gangs. I take it you brought one out to handle the other." Dan inferred.

"Pretty much." Yeah, he'd pretty much won the lottery on that.

"Ha, you just won me twenty bucks kid." he continued seeing Jaunes look of confusion. "Lana bet on you killing them yourself with their own weapons. Girl watches too many movies. I got you figured as somebody with more gray matter than some B-movie action hero though."

"Am I gonna need to make some kind of statement on the fight?" Jaune asked.

Dan waved his hand dismissively "Naw we got a story that fits some politician's narrative better."

I'm never gonna be able to believe in the system if I keep talking to Dan, am I?

"Seriously though, you did damn good work kid." Dan continued. "You got your man, handled an unwinnable situation with your knowledge of the city, and not to mention you got three other felons off the street the same day."

"I did what now?" He asked confused.

"Oh, yeah, the docs said you may not remember everything thanks to that hit. You seem to remember the fight, but do remember bagging those three marks in the morning and the pedophile in the club." Dan asked.

"No." He kinda had a fuzzy idea about hitting somebody between his blackout and the hospital but there was no way he had forgotten anything before that. Why did Dan think he got some guys in the morning? Racking his brain for anything he remembered something Dan had told him in the train station. He'd know him as a Beacon dropout and had said he'd done some work before.

Holy shit, I'm impersonating somebody else!

No wonder the police thought he was somebody worth a damn. He needed to clear this up immediately, he thought in a panic.

"But onto the real business. We got something on the slightly illegal side for you to do."

Any thought of explaining to the dirty cop, that he'd witnessed doing illegal actions, that this was all just a big misunderstanding, died. I'm fucked.

Dan took out a manila envelope and passed it to him. "We need you to break into this guy's house and rough him up."

I'm so completely fucked.

"We know he's got the mother of drug stashes in his place," Dan continued, unaware of Jaune's increasingly pale face. "But we can't find anything to get a warrant. At least not before he moves it all tomorrow night."

Two days ago he'd have taken any cop's word at face value. "You know?" he asked suspiously.

"A heads up from your boss."

"What boss?" it seemed being confused was just gonna be his default state.

"Don't bullshit me," Dan said in a tone closest to annoyance he'd heard yet. "I know you got a thing with Hei."

Honestly, he had no idea who that was. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like he could say that. Guess he'd just add it to the increasing list of things he was blundering his way into. Seriously, how was this his life all of a sudden?

"Got me." he settled on. It didn't seem like Dan had an issue with his apparent connection to Hei, but instead his apparent concealment of it. "So what do these drugs have to do with me?" if he was stuck with this he'd at least figure out as much as he could. Just going with things wasn't exactly putting him in a good spot at this point. If there was some way out of his situation he wasn't gonna find it by not figuring out more.

"The guys some kind of lawyer. We dropped the ball the last time he had a shipment and he's got a solid case of harassment against some guys at the precinct. We can't risk getting more involved or make up some bull to get the warrant. Sense Hei gave us the info we can't exactly go to a judge with it. That leaves us with you. Break-in and find his stash, then call me. That'll give us reason to go in. We already got the papers written on how it goes down." He explained.

"How does it go down?" Jaune questioned.

"Lot of questions." Dan commented neutrality.

"Ended up in the hospital cuase I didn't ask enough." he relpied, hopefully more evenly than he currently felt. Jaune was under no illusion that if he didn't do what Dan asked or the officer suspected he wasn't all in, then the papers would be written up with his name on it them instead. He couldn't afford to waver if he wanted to avoid jail, or worse.

Dan looked at him for a moment as they sat at a red light. "Fair enough" he decided. "It says somebody broke into his place and I saw it while I passed by on a regular patrol. I heroricly busted in, sadly the intruder heard me and slipped out the back. As luck would have it though I happen upon one of the biggest drug stashes in the city."

Jaune pondered the plan for a moment. "So why even have me? Can't you just make it up?"

"Guys gotta shit ton of cameras in the house," Dan awnsered. "Wear a mask when you do it."

He didn't miss how that important detail was an after-thought in this conversation. "So why…" the words sat on the edge of his tongue for a bit longer than they should have. "rough him up?"

"Making a point" If Dan picked up his hesitation he didn't show it.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Jaune's head was spinning as the gravity of the situation set in. The contents of his stomach churned violently as his mind conjured images of him dead or locked up. It was just like Beacon, he just lied and lied. Built himself a identity as fake as he suspected Yangs breast were. Just like Beacon it was all crashing down. This time he'd be lucky if he ended up homeless. Fuck being someone, he just wanted to go home now.

You can't afford to be as stupid as usal now. His brain coldy rebuked. Run all you want, but when they put a warrant out for me it'll follow me home. That thought definitely didn't help his stomach. I need to figure this out.

He began to think it all over with a cool rationale that had seemingly appeared after yesterday. I have three problems. I need to differentiate myself from whoever the police think I am. There is no way to run at this point. So morals aside I need to complete this mission. Finally I need to find out who Hei is, and how we are somehow connected. He concluded this all at a break-a-neck speed fueled by desperation. If the situation wasn't so dire he might have taken some pride in it.

He finally broke the silence that had set in. "Drop me off at Hei's" This "boss" of his might be a mystery to him, but not to Dan.

"Sure , it ain't too far away." Dan agreed.

A five minute drive later, Juane found himself pulling up to the club that made up part of the alley he'd been in yesterday. Guess I didn't get far from the alley yesterday.

Before he could grab the door to leave Dan looked at him "Don't drop the ball on this kid. I like you and think you're ready for the big leagues but if this goes south….well, just don't drop the ball on this."

The big leagues of helping cops falsify evidence? "I won't"

Pushing open the door his hand desperately fumbled for another cigarette to calm his turbulent nerves. Stepping out he got three steps and one puff into his cig before Dan called to him from the open window of the car.

"I just remembered something kid." His tone, while calm caused the hair on Jaune's neck to stand on end. "Officer Joe, he said you'd be at an apartment across town instead of the hospital. Said he met you to pick up those three felons yesterday morning and got your scroll number. And you aint got no phone. Now Joe could only be more useless if he was crippled in my book." Dan eyed him cooly "Still, it'd be one hell of a joke if he gave his little manila envelope to some other guy." his eye's narrowed. "Wouldn't it be?"

For a moment fear threatened to overtake Juane; Dan knew he was a fake. Then a different feeling overtook him. It was the same anger that had took in the hospital. Here he was being forced to put his life on the line for some corrupt cops becuase they didn't want to do their jobs right. On top of that, Dan had the adduacity to accuse him after putting him into this position.

He walked back to the squad car and leaned into the window. Purposely, took a long drag and blew it into the vehicle. "Jokes are funny Dan. So if you wanna do some real police work and ask me a question," he frowned angrily "I'm right here"

Dan let out another laugh that were quickly becoming annoying to Jaune. "Just checking kid. As I said, Joe's an idiot, Us bages know there is only one Butcher of Beacon on these streets."

Well, that's a nickname.

He leaned off the window, satisfied. "You said this was the big leagues, Dan,"

"Yeah"

"Big leagues, big pay." Jaune finished. Life-threatening situation or otherwise, he still had bills to pay.

"Don't worry killer. That's the idea." Dan assured.

Finally Jaune turned and left the squad car. He listen as the car sped off as he walked into the alley where nobody could see him. Taking a breath he leaned on the wall as all the stress he'd keep down came rushing to the fore. Then he puked his guts out.

So while I intended this to be more on the side of humor I'm finding this is gonna more heavily focus on Jaune as a character. There will still be some funny parts, but this is gonna be a look at how innocent people change in bad situations. I always liked pre-season four Jaune as a naive character in a world he wasn't mentally ready for. After season 3 I really was looking forward to him using the death of his partner to become a character that's more bleak outlook contrasted with his more power of friendship style teammates. Nope, he just has some brief feel-good moments then trips and cries in the face of Cinder. What a waste. There is also a bit of a personal aspect in this as I went from a home-schooled religious type to homeless in a bad neighborhood to the infantry. It's interesting to see how various conditions can rapidly change a person. Anyways, thanks to everybody for your support. The feedback is what keeps me going and improving. Thanks to everybody wishing me well, too.

PS: still looking for a beta-reader.