Man, this one came out pretty late, sorry about that. It's just that all Friday was spent traveling back home for winter break, then Saturday was spent catching up with my dad, then Sunday was spent with my sister, then Monday was spent finishing this. Welp, it's done now, so enjoy!

Jaune Arc's aura dropped into the red with a final, quick swipe that had cut under his guard. He grunted as his knees buckled, the exhaustion and weakness finally dragging him down. He fell back and onto the floor, panting heavily, with a sheen of sweat on his face. His aura was almost completely drained. The Mysterious Magnum was filled only with empty casings, recently expelled. Crocea Mors gently slipped from his tired fingers. He was completely at his opponent's mercy.

Thankfully, his opponent was exceptionally merciful.

"Yippee! I win!" Ruby shouted as she let Crescent Rose fall off to the side in one hand, while pumping the other into the air, formed as a victorious fist. She smiled wide.

However, her triumphant pose couldn't be maintained for long. Her chest was heaving with ragged pants, made all the worse by her lung-emptying victory cry. It was tiring just for her to keep one hand over her head, so much so that she quickly dropped it. In fact, she was so tired that she decided now might as well be as good a time as ever to take a break. Immediately.

She retracted Crescent Rose and stashed it away, before flopping down onto the floor beside Jaune. With a last, shuddering breath, she filled up her lungs, closed her eyes and focused on trying to calm down her breathing back to something manageable.

Both of them were red in the face, covered in sweat, down on aura, breathing heavily and sprawled on the training room floor.

Jaune lazily traced his gaze over to the scoreboard, which kept track of the two's auras. His had entered the red, while Ruby's was still clinging to the yellow, a shade of orange so dark that it was only by the slightest margin that she wasn't in the red herself.

Damn.

"You're really good," Ruby eventually said between pants.

Heh, even in exhaustion, she's uplifting others. Typical Ruby. "Thanks," he said, after a few more breaths of his own. "You're fast."

She mustered a weak laugh, "Well, it's sorta my semblance, y'know?"

"I know." He groaned, feeling all of the stiff, numb parts of his body where she'd hit him with that ridiculous weapon of hers, going at ridiculous speeds. "Oh man, I know..."

"You're a lot better now," Ruby said. "Not like you were ever bad... just clumsy. You've got a hang of things now, like you're more used to it."

That he was. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been demoralized by his first fight at Beacon, when Pyrrha had so soundly trounced him. She'd barely fallen below the top rank of the green, while driving him to near zero. He'd quickly realized, however, that Pyrrha was in a whole different class than any of them.

He was the Lone Wanderer. He'd spent years in the vault practicing his fighting skills, then he'd spent a year in the wasteland, honing those skills and building upon them to be a brutal killing machine.

Pyrrha Nikos had been raised from birth to be a champion. The latest in a long line of Mistralian tournament fighters, she'd spent her entire life working for this exact goal, working to be the best. He'd read an article on what her life had been back in Mistral and... man. Her routine had been strict and demanding to an extreme.

In fact, the only other person who he could he think of that outmatched her when it came to being a living weapon would be Bishop Beauvais himself, who'd had spent literally every minute of his entire life micromanaged to create the perfect human fighter.

The point was, Pyrrha was the human embodiment of skill. Most were not. That's not to say that they were unskilled, oh no. Everyone at Beacon was a formidable fighter, which was an understandable requirement for those who'd gotten into one of Remnant's most prestigious schools. Still, some were better than others. For example, team CRDL were fairly low on the totem pole, whereas teams RWBY and JNPR were the best in the year. Pyrrha was on top.

He had to give them credit. Everyone at Beacon had gotten there through hard work and dedication, even the most detestable types like Cardin, who Jaune had never seen be anything but mean. And it wasn't even his kind of mean. No, the Lone Wanderer had never gone out of his way to torment people for his own amusement. He'd only wanted people to leave him alone.

Jaune shook his head. Cardin reminded him of Butch, and that made him dislike him. Simple.

Still, he had to admit that Cardin was skilled and deserved to be here, along with everyone else. Pyrrha was the most exceptional, but everyone deserved some praise. Certainly, CRDL had endured their hardships, and credit had to be given where credit was due.

RWBY was filled with some of the best in the grade, as was JNPR. Jaune Arc was more than willing to praise them.

And everyone had their own reasons for being there.

Ruby had told him about how she and her sister had grown up for years seeking to help people the way their parents had, how they'd started to train earlier than most. Their conviction had appeared early, and it had remained strong, driving them to the top. It was especially impressive for Ruby, who was two years younger than most. She was fifteen, with half a year left until sixteen (as she was keen to remind him). Certainly, they, and many others, had come there for reasons better than his.

He looked at her now. She'd closed her eyes to rest. The redness in her face had subsided, now replaced with a pleasant rosiness. Heh... rosy.

Yes, well, crappy jokes aside, she let herself relax as he had, and her breathing had now evened out more, though she was certainly still tired. More than him, certainly. Jaune had an advantage over just about everyone when it came to stamina. His time in the wasteland had enabled him to work harder for longer, with less amenities like food, sleep or water. It seemed that even his aura coincided with this, being a larger pool than normal. It also helped enhance his strength, a strength rivaled only by people like Cardin, Yang, Nora and Pyrrha, a strength developed through hauling steel in the Pitt, carrying supplies across vast distances, pushing back against supermutant assaults—a strength developed through surviving the harshest of conditions.

Miss Goodwitch had realized this and advised him to bring it into his fighting, to incorporate his strength and his stamina into a unique style. He relentlessly bashed at his opponent's defenses to try and break through their guard or tire them out, for he'd win in a battle of attrition. His favorite trick was keeping up the constant pressure until his opponent became tired enough, distracted enough, weak enough, that he got his opening. Several of his fights had ended with him setting his enemies into a lock and jamming Croce Mors against them, which would rip through their aura in no time.

Even as he was developing his new style over the last month, he'd fared well. He'd only lost two matches since his first fight with Pyrrha. The first had been against Cardin, in a long and brutal bout during their second week that had been an incredibly close match. A good fight, good enough that his opponent had given him a nod and a handshake after it was done. Cardin didn't respect many things, like faunus or women or anyone scrawny, but he respected strength.

He'd progressed quickly enough, however, that he would now surely beat Cardin handily. It had always just been a matter of adapting and merging his skills from Earth with the new environment of Remnant. Hell, he'd very nearly beaten Ruby just now. He'd nearly beaten Weiss too, the only other person to have bested him in sparring class. However, the heiress was skilled and highly motivated to kick his ass.

At this point, he was easily in the top ten percent of battle class. Being in the top ten percent of fighters at a place so prestigious as Beacon meant that he was easily in the top one percent of fighters in all of Remnant, at least when it came to people his age.

His goals for coming to Beacon had been completed. He was an excellent fighter now, as proficient as the school could make him right now. He could leave now and build upon his skills, just as he had built upon his vault training back on Earth. Ruby and he had upgraded the magnum and even looked over Crocea Mors to make sure everything was in good order.

He could leave.

He glanced at Ruby again.

He wouldn't.

Wait, won't what?

I won't go.

Go where?

Away. Anywhere. Anywhere that isn't here. I'm staying.

Why not? You always said you would?

Well... I... wait, that's it!

"Hey Ruby, wanna go to armory?"

The girl rushed to her feet in a flurry of red.

"Of course I do!"

Undoubtedly, her body had protested against her quick movements. Her muscles still probably ached, and judging from the slight panting, her lungs still hadn't exactly gotten back on track. Nevertheless, the mention of weaponry had gotten her on her feet and instilled her with excitement.

Jaune liked to think that some of that excitement was purely due to him, too.

"So what's this super-secret project?" Ruby asked.

"You'll just have to wait and see," Jaune replied with a smirk.

Ruby pouted and mumbled something under her breath. He thought that he caught words like 'unfair' and 'mean' in there mixed in with a few general grumblings, but Ruby didn't make any significant protest.

They'd walked together and chatted on their way to the armory. Under one arm, Jaune held his duffel bag, the very same one that he'd brought with him from Earth, that he'd now recovered from rocket locker. He'd used to think that it was a high-quality piece of equipment, though his time in Remnant now had him perceiving it as a ratty piece of junk. It was. Well, to an extent. Both his bag and the Gamma Shield armor were in great condition... for the Wasteland. For Remnant? Not so much.

All of his old belongings were covered with clear marks of wear and age: patches from where they'd been repaired, scratches from accidents and attacks alike, rust and stains of dirt just to name a few. The bag looked terrible, but its contents were worse off.

Well, hopefully that wouldn't be the case for long.

The two of them continued to walk down through the halls with a comfortable quiet between them. Those around them didn't bat a single eye at the odd pair walking together. There was a six-foot tall boy with one eye bloodshot and scarred, a menacing and antisocial air about him. Then there was a girl that smiled and half-skipped everywhere she went, who was hardly half a foot taller than five and who looked to be enjoying the simple act of being alive.

A few people had given the two strange glances in the first few weeks, glances which he'd caught with his own paranoid glare. Now, however, no one batted an eye at what had become a common sight. Seeing Ruby with him was as common as seeing her with her own team, or...

"Hey Ruby?"

"Hm?"

"Do you have, like, any friends in Beacon besides me and your team?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I never really got around to it, I guess. My team's great, and you're great, too. Maybe you should introduce me to your team? I bet they're pretty cool."

He winced. "They uhh... keep to themselves. But seriously, you don't have anyone else?"

"Well, I have my friends back at Signal."

Ah yes, the gang from Signal, as Ruby called them. She'd mentioned them to him a few times, though Jaune had never seen them himself, either through a visit, or a video call, or a letter, or... anything, really.

"Do you still talk to them a lot?"

"Well, I sent them a letter in the first week, and I've sent them out a few since then, too. Haven't gotten anything back." She shrugged and smiled. "I guess there's just not a lot for them to talk about, or they're all trying to coordinate in a big letter, or something. I dunno. I sent my letter to my dad, who's a teacher there, and he told me that he got them and handed them over." She shrugged again. "So I know they got them. I guess it's just taking them a while to reply back."

"Have you talked to any of them by scroll, at least?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Funny thing, I didn't even realize that I didn't have any of their scroll numbers before I was getting ready to leave for Beacon. Then I went around and asked everybody, but I wasn't actually able to get them." Her brow furrowed. "They all had reasons not to give me their numbers... pretty unlucky, right?"

She chuckled nervously.

"Yeah, I was just unlucky. They're good people, though. Good friends. So I know that they'll be sending back a letter of their own soon enough. I know it... anyway, here's the armory."

Sure enough, they'd arrived at the suitably dreary armory. Someone really needed to spruce up the place, maybe throw in a bit of color other than grey. Put in some scented candles or something. Or, maybe just add in a Ruby Rose, who'd be so amazed by all the equipment and weaponry that her elation become downright infectious, a smile spreading to your face too.

Jaune smiled as he watched Ruby descend into her nerdy love of weaponry, ogling everyone else's equipment as they made their way to their own table. Jaune hauled up the duffel bag on top, and Ruby's attention was immediately set on it. She sat down at her stool, but only used the edge of it, leaning close to his bag. He opened it and pulled out the contents.

"This," he began, "is Metal Blaster." He carefully arranged the weapon's warped and bent pieces on the table. "It's a laser rifle, where the laser is produced here," he pointed at the now cracked and fried wave/particle diverter, "and then ran through this series of mirrors and prisms." He pointed at the center and end of the barrel, which were filled with the shattered remains of the aforementioned crystals. "Then it'd come back out the end in the form of several lasers all at once."

"Ooooohh," Ruby said, both entranced and saddened by the weapon's sorry state.

"Now this," Jaune continued, reaching into the bag to pull out the rest, "is Enclave's Bane. It was the first Tesla Cannon ever made. It charged up energy here," he lifted the intact tesla coil, "then channeled it down the barrel until it came out like a lightning bolt.

"Now, obviously, neither of these is in good shape."

"You can say that again," Ruby said with a sad shade of her head. "They're ruined." Her face... he'd never seen her so sad, so truly sad at the sight of such precious and incredible works of art being destroyed. She tilted her head and scrutinized the remains further.

"Most, of them are ruined." He pointed at Metal Blaster. "You can see that most of the actual frame here is intact, just that the inner working are fried or busted." He pointed at Enclave's Bane. "Here, you can see that it's sorta the opposite problem. The tesla coil that powers it is intact, but most of the gun's frame is destroyed."

Ruby caught on instantly. "Wait... couldn't you maybe, combine them?"

"Maybe, just maybe."

Her eyes filled with a bright, excited light, as she suddenly leaned over the guns and scrutinize them. "Yeah... yeah... wait... these are weird, like, really weird." She turned back to him, face set in a picture of confusion. "I haven't seen anything like this sort of technology... ever!"

He shrugged. "It's unique to where I come from. But don't around telling everyone that I've got weird tech, alright?"

"My lips are sealed!" She dutifully brought one hand up to her mouth, then crossed it over her lips and twisted it, then flicked her fingers away, the action mimicking one locking a door and throwing away the key. "Now come on, tell me everything, everything, about this stuff!"

He chuckled. "Well, for starters, this is a tesla coil..."

"I'm surprised he didn't tell you," Ruby said. "I mean, he's on your team and everything."

"Well..."

I've treated my team like shit from day one.

"He sorta keeps things to himself sometimes."

Ruby nodded. She and Jaune were packing up the equipment that he'd brought, as well as all the tools they'd been using from the armory. It had felt good to be on the other side of the table this time around. At first, Ruby had had to explain to him all of the tools and tech of this world, but now, he'd had the chance to tell her all about Earth's technology. That's not to say he also mentioned the teensy-tiny, itty-bitty little fact that he's from another planet, of course. He simply said that where he was from, the wasteland, they did things differently. Ruby was trusting enough and content enough to believe him.

As it was, however, they weren't talking anymore about his weaponry. He'd mentioned how some of the oil they'd been using smelled bad, and Ruby had said, "well, not as bad as CRDL smelled the other day."

Then he enquired, and then she asked why Ren hadn't told him what happened, and then here they were.

"Well, apparently CRDL had decided to be even meaner to Velvet then they already have," she said with a scowl. "So they went and got a box full of rotten carrots, and they were gonna dump it on her. I think they were trying to get revenge for how her team went and beat them up the other day. Pretty stupid, since that'd just make them get it worse." She shook her head, detesting both their stupidity and the cruel racism. "Well, Ren saw them and dashed in right at the last second, then kicked the box and sent all the carrots back on them!"

She smiled. Jaune did, too. He'd never liked racists.

"Heh, I can just imagine the looks on their faces. They tried to get Ren then, but Velvet jumped and beat them back, then Miss Goodwitch came and everybody got detention for fighting in school!" Ruby chuckled. "It's a little funny how you can get in trouble for fighting at a school where you're being taught how to fight, isn't it?"

"Yeah, a little bit." He shook his head. "Ren is... he's a good guy."

I wish I knew him better.

Ruby nodded. "Yeah, it must be nice to be on a team with him."

I bet it would be.

The two of them finished putting their things away, then left the armory.

"So now what should we do?" Jaune asked.

"Well, I have to go and meet up with my team. Weiss and Yang want to try and coordinate what we're all gonna be wearing to the dance... even though it's in months." She sighed. "But that's my team for you..."

"Dance? There's a dance here?"

"Yup, the big dance. It's at the end of second quarter, right before the first-years go on their first missions. It should be pretty fun... if only I can convince Yang and Weiss not to put me in heels..."

Jaune laughed. "I dunno, I think it'd be pretty funny to watch you stumble across the dance floor."

Ruby pouted and punched him in the arm. "Not funny! It won't be funny at all! Those things are terrible! I don't know how everyone manages to fight in them!"

"Me neither," Jaune said with a shake of his head. "I know how hard it is to walk in them. Once, I was talking with my friend Amata, and I said that they couldn't be that bad. So, she made me try them on." He winced at the memory. "I fell face-first on the floor... had a black eye for a week."

Beside him, Ruby descended into giggles. The giggles descended into full blown laughter, and she stopped to lean on the wall beside her. "T-that's... that's too good!" She pointed at him and kept laughing hysterically.

He could only smile and shake his head, baring the shame that really didn't bother him so much. If anyone else in Beacon, in all of Remnant, had treated him like this, then he wouldn't have put up with it for a single second. Well, no one besides Qrow, since the man had saved his life. He could easily see the drunkard uproariously losing it in the same manner to the same story.

Jaune blinked and looked at Ruby again. She really did remind him of Qrow a little bit, from the carefree attitude to the scythe. Huh, maybe there was some kind of connection between the two...?

Nah.

"Alright, alright, come on," he said, pulling on Ruby's hood to drag her off the wall. "It really isn't that funny anyhow."

"But it is!"

"Well... maybe a little bit..."

He chuckled just as her laughter died down.

"So what do you know about this dance?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Pretty much just what I told you. I think it's supposed to be pretty fancy, though. I only ever went back to one dance, in Signal, and people dressed up a little bit, but no dresses or suits or anything. I know everyone's gonna have to wear things nicer than that."

The two started walking again, and Jaune added, "I've never been to a dance myself. There was a graduation dance for seniors at my school... but I left town before then. I've danced in general though, at parties."

"Really? Are you any good at dancing?"

"People have told me I am... heh, the last big party I went to, I danced with everybody." He smiled at the memory. It was the party celebrating the Coalition's victory at Raven Rock. Eden was destroyed and the Enclave's primary base annihilated. An incredible win for everyone. And it really had been everyone.

The Coalition had been formed out of the Brotherhood and the Outcasts, who'd put their differences aside just long enough to kill the Enclave. After the war, they'd go back to being at each other's throats, but they were able to get along long enough to see Adams Air Force Base taken. The Regulators had also put aside their rivalry with the Brotherhood to join in. Rivet City sent out a detachment of their forces, and other volunteers from all over the wasteland came in, driven by the promise of water for all and the destruction of the Enclave, who'd become increasingly militant. It wasn't hard to bring wastelanders to their side after Raven Rock, where records of the Enclave's atrocities were kept.

It was after that very same battle where he'd managed to have the last big party he'd ever gone to. Heh, he'd danced with Jane for a while, before John showed off his protective streak. Everybody knew he didn't think about Jane that way, but brothers were brothers. So, naturally, he'd then danced with John for a while, too. Then he'd even pulled aside Fawkes for a waltz, and Dogmeat had leapt around on the dance floor, not one to be left out of the festivities. Some of the scribes had even programmed Liberty Prime to do the robot for all of them. Sarah had proven herself surprisingly good at the tango...

"Jaune, are you okay?" Ruby asked.

"Wha? Yeah, yeah I'm fine," he said, quickly rubbing his eyes to pre-eminently crush the tears forming there. "I'm fine, it's just that my eye acts up sometimes. It hurts."

Ruby nodded, believing with the lie. Or maybe she didn't, and she was just content to let him have his privacy. Perhaps she knew it would be fruitless to try and dig it out of him, since he'd always been so reserved.

"Yeah, I bet it does... how did you even get it, if you don't mind telling me?"

"What, my scar?"

"Yeah, though you don't have to tell if you don't want to."

"Eh, not much of a story. I just got it in a fight. I've been in a lot of fights, after all."

The Lone Wanderer sat on the cliff beside Beacon, looking out over the Emerald Forest, legs swinging off the side. The sun was low and cast a beautiful shine on the forest, making it glow a light green. When he wasn't at the garden, he often stopped off here. It satisfied his desire to be alone and around nature.

Besides being peaceful, it was more isolated than the garden, and that meant he was able to take a smoke.

The tip of his cigarette burned brightly as he took a drag, then let the smoke billow out from his mouth. It was a favored past-time, sitting on the edge of a cliff, looking out over the beautiful forest, relaxing after a day of training and studying.

Life was nice.

His right eye felt irritated, as if something had gotten stuck in it, all around it. He would've moved a hand up to rub out the offending article, had he not realized a long time ago that that wouldn't work. He simply sighed and took another drag. It really wasn't that bad a burn, mostly sticking to the area around his eye, stretching out over his cheekbone. The eye itself, a dark red with a blot of black in the middle.

He sighed and let out another cloud of smoke. He'd gotten to thinking about it, ever since Ruby mentioned it earlier that afternoon. He idly tapped the side of his cigarette as he let his mind drift, drift further and further away from the present, back into the past...

He fired his plasma rifle, but it missed.

Well, it missed Autumn's head, instead contacting the laser pistol he held up just beside. The Colonel swore and snarled, aiming the weapon back at the young man just as he ran out of MF cells for his rifle.

His eyes widened as Colonel Autumn pulled the trigger.

For a second—no, a fraction of a second—it appeared as if the pistol wouldn't fire, as if it'd been too damaged from the plasma shot. It spluttered and died... before letting loose a red, smoky haze and a fractured, faint blast of crimson light that shot straight towards him.

The young man screamed as he fell back, clutching his face, an unbearable agony ripping through his head. He squirmed and writhed on the ground.

"No!" It was Fawkes. He heard the big guy yell, then he heard the sound of his gatling-laser ripping through the air above him with bolts of energy. He heard Colonel Autumn scream and collapse.

Around them, John and Jane finished off the last of the Colonel's men, gunning down a final soldier before doubling back. The young man felt their hands on his shoulders, gently pulling him up into a sitting position, then prying his hands away.

"Hey, it's alright, buddy, we gotcha," Jane cooed. She looked into his eye, though he could only see her doing that through his other one, vision clouded and blurry from tears. "Son of a bitch nailed you... though his heater's too busted to kill you, thank God..."

She kept close to him as she looked into his wound, and he tried to focus on anything else beside the pain. He ended up focusing on another person's pain: Colonel Autumn. It sounded like Fawkes and John were giving him a pretty hard time.

He heard whining too, as Dogmeat pressed close to his side, pressing his muzzle into his hand and gently licking his fingers.

Heh, such a good boy.

So there he lay, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by computers and dead bodies, mostly unarmored scientists who'd scrambled for weapons when they stormed the satcom array's central room. After attacking the sentries outside, they attacked Autumn and his men within. The area was secure, and only the Colonel himself was left alive.

After a few minutes and a drop or two from a stimpak, the young man was back on his feet, though with one hand covering his eye, which Jane said may or may not be savable, depending on how fast they could meet up with the Brotherhood to get it fixed.

He had something to do, before then.

Colonel Autumn lay on the floor, clutching the wounds at his stomach, where Fawkes had nearly gutted him with a blast from his gatling laser. His face was covered in his own blood, from where Fawkes and John had battered him.

The young man smiled and kicked him in the side of the head, earning a satisfied groan of pain. Dogmeat stood beside him, bristling and growling.

"This is the end of the line for you, you piece of shit," he said, then spat down onto the Colonel. "We'll kill you here, then we'll find and kill your little pet, Bishop."

"My... pet...?"

"Yeah, I had a talk with Eden. He told me all about you and Bishop, how the two of you've taken power in the Enclave for yourself. Bishop's like your son, right? Well, I'm glad to know I killed his father just like he killed mine and... and why are you laughing?"

Sure enough, Colonel Autumn had started to darkly chuckle to himself, though the extent of his mirth was limited both the intangible brevity of the situation, as well the incredibly tangible pain that had been inflicted upon him.

"God... now I know how you little shits found me... now I know what's happening..."

"Yeah, Eden turned on you. We'll give him back power to the Enclave, then settle a peace. You're done."

This only managed to make Autumn laugh harder, no matter the pain.

"Jesus Christ, you're stupid... I see what this is now... it's a hit job, and you got roped right into it, kid." He shook his head and looked up to the young man, staring him in the eye. "That genocidal toaster's got you wrapped around his finger..."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm saying, you got tricked. Whatever Eden told you is a lie... I haven't been taking power from him, and I certainly haven't been working with that psycho, Bishop." He stopped laughing and the smile fell from his face, instead twisting in pain as a fresh wave of agony crashed through him. "God... those two have been working against me for years, but I didn't think they'd be so brazen as to outright assassinate me... should've know better... known better..."

"Don't listen to him," John said. "He's probably just lying, maybe trying to get us to spare him."

"Does it look like I'm lying to you, fool?" Autumn spat. "No... I'm dead... I'm not stupid... though you are. Bishop's not my pet... he's Eden's. That godforsaken calculator's raised that little prick since he was a baby."

"What?"

Autumn nodded. "Ask anyone in the Enclave... they all know about Bishop's past. The past of Eden's precious, 'perfect human'. We found him in a vault designed to breed super-soldiers. We were going to recruit them, but a critical failure in the vault's system left carbon monoxide in the air. Everyone was poisoned... except for a baby that had been kept in a special oxygen chamber to help develop his lungs."

"Bishop..."

"You got it. We took him in, and Eden took him for himself. That toaster knew he'd need someone he could trust as a surrogate ruler... so he's raised Bishop his whole life. He's raised him to be a good little genocidal psychopath...

"I've been controlling a more moderate faction of the Enclave for years... the group that just wants to establish law and order over the people of the wasteland. But Eden and Bishop?" He shook his head. "Those two want a cleansing. They want to destroy everyone and everything that's still alive so they can resettle and start anew, with only pure humans."

Colonel Autumn lazily lifted his head and looked around at his group of murderers. "And now you've gotten rid of their main rival." He nodded his head to a different part of the room, and when the young man looked, he saw a security camera set into the wall.

"They'll probably take the footage and show it around, show everyone the death of the brave and heroic Colonel Autumn at the hands of impure savages, make me into a martyr... their martyr... bastards. They could just kill me and my allies, but then there'd be repercussions against them. Now... now they can just use me for their own support."

He shook his head again, slowly letting it fall to the side to rest against the floor. "You idiots... idiots..."

Autumn became silent.

The door to the room smashed open. Who could it be, other than Bishop, with his terrible, despicable smile. Behind him, stood his contingent of soldiers. Just beside him, Arthur menacingly hefted his super sledge.

"Men, we have some assassins to dispatch," Bishop said.

Jaune shook his head and took another drag from his cigarette. What a goddamn fool he'd been. Eden had tricked him and used him for his own purposes, finally mending the political split in the Enclave and securing power for himself and his 'son'.

After Bishop's counter ambush, he and his companions had barely managed to take cover and escape through a sewer grate. Yet again, they'd been forced to flee underground, like rats. Bishop had that effect.

He smiled. But then they'd turned it all around. They'd liberated the memorial, then attacked Raven Rock. The Brotherhood scribes had managed to dig up the code used for activating the 'cleansing' sequence for ZAX computers that wiped their memory and shut them down. He'd personally worked alongside the Lyons Pride and led his group into the Raven Rock to kill Eden.

And kill him they had. Then they'd dismantled him and destroyed every piece of that genocidal toaster that could've been used to bring him back. Wherever Bishop had been at the time, he'd certainly been in pain. For he'd payed the bastard back in kind.

A father for a father...

"Hey Jaune!"

Well, time to get away from the past.

"Hey Ruby," he called back with a wave and a smile. "Watcha doing here?"

"Oh, just thought I'd go out into the Emerald Forest and give a quick field-test to some of the new tuning I gave Crescent Rose. My team's actually back over there," she pointed behind her with her thumb. Sure enough, he could see the blonde, white and black of her teammates. "Then I saw you sitting over here and though I'd... say... hi..."

Jaune raised an eyebrow as her words trailed off, then followed her gaze with his own, until his eyes were looking down at his own cigarette.

"You smoke?"

"Yeah," Jaune answered, taking another drag. "I've smoked for a while, you didn't know?"

"No," she shook her head. "You never brought it up. Well, I noticed that you have really bad breath, but I just thought that you didn't brush your teeth or something."

He winced. Alright, he actually didn't brush his teeth, though the cigarettes probably made it worse. Was his breath really that bad? She'd noticed? What did she think of that? Well, obviously she didn't think very highly...

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why do you smoke?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I just started to. I can't tell you exactly when. I just... did. Maybe it was after the Air Force Base... probably was..." Most of his less healthy habits had been made after that.

"Well, you really shouldn't..."

"Heh, you're not the first person to tell me that," he replied, once more thinking of Qrow.

"No, I'm serious. That'll kill you..." She shook her head quickly, her voice had taken on an airy quality with her last few words.

He chuckled darkly. "I'll be dead long before the cigs get to me..."

"Nope!"

"What?"

"Nope!"

"I don't understa—"

"Nope!"

"But—"

"Nope!"

Ruby marched forward and slowly pushed the hand that held the cigarette further away from his face, then she pivoted and pressed one finger against his forehead. "Nope!" She shook her head. "That's not true. You're gonna live for a long time, and we'll be friends for a long time, and smoking will hurt your lungs and make you live shorter. Soooooo... nope!"

She ignored his indignant protest as her hand flicked out and knocked the cigarette from his grip. Its ember winked out of life as it fell onto the ground beside him, smothered in the dirt.

He turned back to her angrily, about to say a few less-than-kind words. The look on her face killed them in his mouth, however. It was sad. It was a sad, raw look that conveyed nothing but concern. Again, she was going and showing naked concern for him. It rendered him silent.

"Please Jaune? Just think it over... I want you to live for a long time." She smiled at him, "Okay?"

"Hey Ruby, hurry it up! You're the one who dragged us out here!" Yang shouted.

Ruby sighed and looked over her shoulder. She spared Jaune a final glance and said, "Just think it over please?"

He nodded.

She smiled.

Then she turned her back and left him with nothing but rose petals.

The Lone Wanderer glared at someone who dared get too close to him.

He was walking through school, heading back to the forest and his cave after getting in a bit more studiying at the library. The sun was setting, leaving everything in an orange haze. He kept his hands close in front of him, ready to react against anyone and everyone who dared confront him. No one did.

Jaune Arc sighed and thought back to what Ruby had recently told him. Meh, not like he cared. It was true, that he'd die a long time before the cigarettes ever managed to take him. After he left Beacon, he'd be returning to a dangerous life. Even if he never left, even if he graduated and became a huntsman and spent the rest of his life alongside Ruby, it'd be a dangerous one. Though it might be nice to spend it with someone like her—

No. No. No. No.

No.

No.

NO.

He was leaving. He was leaving... he just needed to wait for Ruby to help him make his new weapon. Only Beacon and Ruby would have the resources and the expertise necessary for him to craft it, and he didn't want to throw away such a resource.

So he'd stay. For the weapon. Only the weapon. That was the only reason—

Someone crashed into him.

The Lone Wanderer snarled and threw the person down to the ground. He didn't have his weapons on him, so he brandished his fists and stood before the assailant, ready to pounce.

"Oh! Sorry, I—" The guy looked up at him, eyes widened in fear when he realized just who he'd run into. It was the same scrawny boy he'd seen in class the other day, staring at Pyrrha. "I-I wasn't doing anything, man! I'm not doing anything!"

The student scrambled on the ground away from him, hands up and empty. Though it seemed to take the kid a few seconds to realize that his hands were, indeed, empty, because his eyes widened and he looked at his fingers, bereft of any objects. His eyes tracked the floor around them quickly, then stopped on what he'd dropped.

It was an orange comb that held a few stray hairs in its teeth. Long, crimson hairs.

He snatched it up and scrambled up to his feet.

"I wasn't doing anything! I'm not doing anything!" he frantically told the Lone Wanderer.

Then the boy turned around and took off down the hall. The Wanderer wasn't the only one who was looking after him with a confused gaze.

"That was weird," he muttered to himself. He turned to his side to see just where the kid had bolted out of so quickly, and what he saw gave him a decent explanation.

The girls' locker room.

The Lone Wanderer furrowed his brow. Maybe they guy had walked in on accident, then fervently tried to run out and avoid mortification? Or, maybe, he'd gone in like a creep and freaked when his escape was put in jeopardy. Given his panic, the Wanderer was putting his money on the latter option.

He shook his head. Weirdos would be weirdos... but something about that comb he'd seen, something about it gave him an uneasy feeling.

He chewed on this inside of his cheek. It was probably nothing. Just distract yourself.

As he left the school's premises, he turned a dial on his pip-boy, tuning back into the news. He listened to Lisa Lavender's now familiar voice. Right about now, she should be doing her wrap-up on city politics for the week.

"Polling projections expect the New Dawn to reach the 5% electoral threshold necessary to get seats on the council, after next year's elections..."

The Lone Wanderer grunted and set his bag down on the floor of his little cave. He worked the kinks out of his shoulder, which had been smashed against a tree when he'd been flung through the air by a beowolf's surprise attack. This was just another way for him to practice his skills: getting to sleep.

Ugh, at least he didn't have to spend time with his team... bare their accusing, hateful looks.

He kicked off his boots and shed his clothing down to the underwear, then turned off the light on his pip boy and stretched out on his light, thin blanket. It wasn't close to comfortable, and he thought back, not for the first time, to the nice beds that Beacon had provided. He'd only slept in those for... two days? Three?

He shook his head. Best not to think of that. Or his team. Just go through your nightly routine. Stretch out for a bit, relax, then take a cigarette and have one last smoke at the cave entrance before coming back in to go to sleep.

His hands reached over and pulled up his discarded pants. He rooted through the pockets until he pulled out a small carton of cigarettes. Ruby's face flashed through his mind. He lazily tossed the case back on the floor of the cave.

He could go a night without smoking.

He leaned back and sighed, letting his muscles rest against the hard, cold, stone floor. It wasn't too bad, really. He'd slept in much worse conditions.

The last few days had seen him sleeping much easier, as well. He got at least five hours of sleep every night now. He'd even gotten one with eight. It was still restless slumber, and he still got up a few times a night, but at least he was able to get back to sleep, at least he was able to actually feel rested.

He'd had an idea after his rest in the library with Ruby, just a few days back. He'd even done some research, which showed that his idea may have some merit. It definitely, helped, that was for sure. He was still accosted at night by unpleasantness, but everything was much more bearable now. Aromatherapy really worked.

He turned a dial on the little vaporizer he'd bought out in Vale, then poured in a few drops of his chosen scent. It slowly propagated throughout his little cave, soothing and familiar.

He fell asleep to the smell of strawberry.

A few of the subplots that I've been setting up the last few chapters are advanced, and soon it will pay off. I expect to reach forever fall in chapter fifteen, then we get into Blake's disappearance arc after that.

Also, keep looking at how the narration refers to Jaune, since he'll be called either Jaune or the LW depending on what situation he's in as well as who he's with.

Anyhow, I'll try to get back onto the Sunday publishing schedule for next chapter. All reviews and questions are, as always welcomed and appreciated!