To make a long story short, the plan was for the story to be another take on Vol1-3. Yea, yea, I know. It's overdone. Like, really overdone. Yes, I could've made up an entirely new conspiracy. I did change some things, so bear with me please.
The story begins like the chapter before, with Ruby interning as a junior detective under Jaune. It starts off slow, with a few unconnected murders and other crimes. Ruby and Jaune grow close as friends, they bond over their hatred of paperwork, video games, and comics. Jaune even takes an interest in weapon engineering and all. Fun stuff! Now, if I were to be writing the story, this would not be a Lancaster story. I say that not out of a personal dislike for the ship, but a personal inability to write ships.
But, that is a personal fault. So, any writer picking this idea up may very well write it to be Lancaster. Or not, who cares.
Anyways, a plot point will be Jaune and Ruby investigating a dust store robbery. Witnesses and cameras state it was White Fang, but they manage to do some detective work and track down some stuff to find a small stronghold filled with dust. A stronghold that promptly blows up when the police come to raid it.
A few more things happen and throughout this entire time, Ruby keeps contact with her sister, who is in beacon, and learns about her team. She even meets them and hangs out with her sister in Vale, where she sees Jaune as he's investigating another white fang dust robbery. This is essentially the docks from volume 1. But at the docks, its Adam instead of Roman. Blah blah blah, add team whatever as a B-plot if you like, blah blah blah.
And then, the Breach happens. It's a low point where Jaune seems awfully serious all of a sudden, all of the joy in him gone. He recovers, but Ruby worries for him.
Later on, Ruby begins to notice a few odd things. Jaune loses pieces of evidnece (specifically scrolls and other data) and it all comes to a head on a case involving one murder that became two. The second murder happened because Jaune noticed that there was a bug in the murderer's (a councilman) office. The murderer then proceeded to kill another councilman.
Either that, or Adam dies and Blake takes an interest in Jaune as he does very weirdly thorough investigation and hides evidence. (on the topic of Adam's death, have the opening robbery that Roman does essentially be replaced with Adam doing it and keep it the same, even the usage of Cinder's powers. This is a setup for something later down the line.) Either way, Ruby gets tipped off and confronts Jaune.
It gets really emotional and Ruby gets choked up and asks if Jaune killed someone, he says no. She asks if he's caused any of the murders they investigated. He doesn't answer. Ruby makes to leave, but Jaune asks if she trusts him. She says yes.
He tells Neo to put her weapon down.
And then Jaune lays down the truth. It all began a year or two ago on a case he would never forget. Roman Torchwick was murdered. He finished the case and caught who did it, but the guy ended up dead in his cell. And then Jaune was visited by Neo, Roman Torchwick's vengueful partner. After being prompted by her, he began to keep an eye on that case and dug into the person. But nothing ever turned up.
Neo admitted she was interrogating the guy over whoever he worked for or even why he did it, but someone came by before she could do anything. So she had to flee. Ruby asks if she was the one who committed the Neopolitan murders. He says no, she did a few in the beginning, mostly to people they knew were in the conspiracy, but the rest were dopplegangers. Dopplegangers that conveniently avoided police patrols and managed to do other very suspicious things. Ruby yells at him for working with Neo, who was a criminal, but Jaune said that there was a bigger threat. Something that necessitated him having someone who could go invisible and do things while he had an alibi.
And with Roman's death and his partnership with Neo, thus began Jaune's deep dive into a conspiracy he barely understood. He talks about how a lot of the murders (not all) and other crimes he had investigated and plenty he didn't somehow linked back to the conspiracy. He talks about how White Fang robberies also coincided with areas that the police were told not to patrol, or in blind spots in the patrols. All of the evidence he had stolen were from ex-councilmen and people he found were involved in the conspiracy. He then goes on and on about little inconsistencies that all paint a big picture that he couldn't understand.
And then the breach happened, and he realized the truth.
The council wasn't dealing with the White Fang in order to sieze power. They ruled on the status quo. Though, they were doing that (council activates emergency powers and ramps up militancy of their police force) And the White Fang would never willingly deal with humans, nor would they really have the means to get the entire council in on the thing. No, neither side would've started or been interested in cooperating for what seemed like dust stockpiling and economic downturn, but with the Breach, it all made sense.
A third party was manipulating all of them. And for what? The destruction of Vale itself. He reckoned that the councilmen were offered either power over the ruins or just to survive. He reckoned the White Fang were being strongarmed into it. And he knew when the plot was going down: the Vytal Festival. And calculating the amount of dust stolen, the bombs created with them could probably cause enough chaos to block Amity's airports and kick up a fuss.
When Ruby asks about the murder of the councilman, he explained that he knew there were many councilors in on the conspiracy, maybe even all. To test, he simply had Neo steal a bug from the victim's office and hand it to Jaune, who would essentially trick the murderer into killing the councilor. He wouldn't be implicated and in the end, a normal person wouldn't kill over it. So he basically just offed two members of the conspiracy, got their scrolls and files, and was left looking like a pawn in the whole thing, or someone who was there accidentally to those who watched.
Anyways, after explaining everything, Ruby is stunned. She asks if Jaune was ever her friend or if he was faking it. And with a bitter smile, he says that he was never lying about being friends. He really did like Ruby. It was just that he was extremely paranoid and very unwilling to bring her into it. But now? She has a choice. Walk away, end her internship, or continue on and help him unravel the whole thing.
Being a huntress, there wasn't much of a choice.
From there, the plan is a bit less mapped out. Ruby convinces Jaune to turn himself in after all is said and done. No matter who he did it to, no matter why, he still orchestrated a murder (murders, if you want to make him do more of them to try and cause the conspiracy to self-implode) and all. He agrees out of respect for Ruby's friendship and also because he does feel bad about it. Yang is somehow brought in (being the only one Ruby knows and is close to and trusts that is actually in Beacon) and tries to murder Jaune for bringing Ruby into it and saying it's too dangerous for her.
Jaune defends himself by saying she initiated the conversation, he gave her a choice, and asks if it's too dangerous for her, a huntress with some training and a good weapon, why isn't it for him? An untrained teen in over his head that has been driven to extreme paranoia due to the stress of having to deal with the existence of such a large plot constantly. Anyways, how Jaune finds out and foils Cinder's plans are up to you.
Because I don't know. I do have one idea, however.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Jaune manages to beat Cinder just in time to save the Vytal festival, not by actually figuring out the plot, but by finding out who is the mastermind. And when he does (it's Cinder) he realizes that it really doesn't matter what the plot is if the festival is still weeks away. He has a way to get her immediately.
So he orders a hit on her. Either through Neo and a few others in disguise or just hires a hitman. The hit is preformed in public and, in the fight, Cinder is forced to use her powers. This alerts her presence to Ozpin and Glynda (Glynda should recognize the power she used) and she is captured.
After it all, Jaune confesses his movements throughout the entire thing in a dark interrogation cell to an incredibly impressed Glynda and Ozpin. Instead of being imprisoned, and against Glynda's advice, Ozpin says one thing.
"Would you like a job?"
Also, as a self indulgent little note, an idea I had was a small Neo section where she had her thoughts about the whole thing. And how, even if she could kill Jaune ten times over (he's a physical weenie) he'd probably have a hundred back up plans. He'd more than proven to her that he was capable of that sort of thing with the different ways he manipulated the conspiracy into self-cannibalizing.
Anyways, this entire idea is up for anyone to grab. Alter, erase, or even just straight out ignore as you like. I'd genuinely love to see the different takes ya come up with.