So I just saw Promare in a theater, some really good fun. that's what Trigger does, after all.

Jaune and Neo sat on either side of a table. They had been at work for hours; the moon had reached the top of its arc in the sky and now slowly descended toward the horizon, giving way to day.

They occupied a small, abandoned storage shed in a shady part of Vale. He and Neo had dragged their prisoner to this condemned collection of stacked up bricks after he and his two pals intruded on Neo's interrogation. Unexpectedly, now the two compared notes.

Spread out on the table they each poured over scribbled-on papers in a way reminiscent to Jaune of his late-night study sessions before a test, be it those back in the Vault or Beacon. Except instead of going over equations or monster anatomy, they pooled their knowledge about the Enclave, about Cinder and about the White Fang. For both now considered all three to be their enemies.

Jaune had graduated from prisoner to partner, at least for now. Funnily, the Enclave stooges had helped forge their alliance of convenience. It was strangely exhilarating. He felt for the first time in a long time like he was in control of something, like he was really doing something. He was making his own choices and accomplishing something, not running through the motions and having to trust in Beacon or Atlas or anyone else.

He looked over at their prisoner who sat, bag over his head, on a chair by the back of the room. Dead men weren't generally given that label, though, right? Ex-prisoner, then. Death had somewhat freed him from imprisonment, in an unpleasant way.

He had held out again Jaune's techniques for not very long, quickly telling them everything he knew. A knife was then promptly jammed into his skull.

He had said plenty that Jaune and Neo could chew on:

He was a member of the New Dawn. Specifically, he was one of the small legion of volunteers in the party's "protection squads" that were assembled alongside rallies and meetings. Apparently, some in these same squads also acted as ad-hoc vigilante groups; at least, they considered themselves vigilantes. Patrolling streets at night might have been noble enough, but they also found it fit to beat and pick fights with random Faunus and volunteers and staff for other political parties.

But that was hardly the most insidious piece of the puzzle. For several weeks, threads had been woven through certain groups in the New Dawn that some terrorists and criminals kept a small network of safehouses that needed to be cleared out. Conveniently, this night had been the one planned to hit them all.

It didn't take a genius to surmise just how a bunch of human supremacists had gotten "tipped off" about a number of locations involved with the White Fang and some criminals the night after the Enclave betrayed the White Fang and said criminals.

Their attack had been comprehensive, as indicated by the fact that Neo had driven Jaune and their prisoner around to two different safehouses which they staked out and realized were compromised (obvious given the trucks parked just outside). Neo had been forced to take them to this secluded spot that was sometimes used to host drug deals and hope that no such deal was scheduled to happen soon.

Bishop's betrayal had been methodically planned for a long time. That much was now obvious. And his influence penetrated deeper than either Jaune or Neo originally guessed.

It was this knowledge that finally convinced the pair—as bitter a pill as it may be to swallow—that they would need to put their differences aside. That brought them to the present situation, in which they compared notes on their enemies. Then they could go their separate ways and both be more equipped to kill Bishop and all the others. Neo would disappear into whatever plan she could make, and Jaune would go back to his team…

Jaune suddenly stopped scrawling notes about his latest fight with Bishop. He left the pen's tip on the paper, where ink slowly dribbled out and stained a spot of the white sheet.

Jaune would be going back to his team. He had told them as much. He could find out where they were relatively quickly and then explain the ordeal he had gone through, thus providing them all a good starting point for hunting down the Enclave et all.

Jaune turned and looked at his grisly work. The dead man. How would he possibly be able to explain that? Say that he and Neo and asked him politely to give up his secrets?

And how would he look Ruby in the eye? She surely had told the others by now. How would he look any of them in the eye? How could they bare to look him in the eye now that they knew what he really was? Now that they knew about the Lone Wanderer.

He was knocked out of his thinking when Neo loudly snapped his fingers to get his attention.

He shook his head and brought his attention back to the world around him. "What is it?"

Neo pointed down to the papers she'd written on, then pointed to the corpse and then finally brandished her scroll to Jaune, on which was written a message:

I'm going to take care of that thing, look over what I wrote. I'll get rid of the others in the trunk too

Jaune glanced past the scroll to his diminutive partner, who waited for him to respond. "You know somewhere to dump it?"

She nodded, typed some more and showed him her scroll again:

There a manhole cover around here that I used once before.

"Alright." Jaune shrugged and turned his attention to the papers strewn across the table. Neo got up, grabbed the corpse and hauled it out of a back entrance, straining somewhat with her slim arms to bare the bulky body's weight in a way that didn't put too much pressure on her bad ankle. If Jaune were more a gentleman, perhaps he would have helped his partner in crime. Chivalry, however, was as dead as that dumbass already was, so Jaune didn't bother. He focused on his reading.

When he picked up the paper Neo had filled up, though, he noticed something else instead: a dry and cracked stain on the wrist of his looted new hoodie. He recognized blood when he saw it. Turning over his hand and examining it, he saw no cut there in his own skin. Unpleasantly, just thinking about being wounded made the ambient pain in his chest feel somehow worse.

After grimacing and gently patting his chest, he managed to get his mind off the pain and returned his attention to the blood on his wrist. It had not come from him. He looked at the now empty chair across the room. Splatters of blood remained on the wood and the concrete below it.

The Lone Wanderer had been careful not to get any more blood on him after peeling off the jacket and jeans from the man Neo had lobotomized. He had even rolled up his sleeves for the gruesome task. Still, a drop had slipped past his preparations.

He wiped it off what he could, turning it into dust that fell to the floor. A brown stain still remained in the grey fabric, but such a stain could have been caused by everything from melted chocolate ice cream to motor oil. He would be fine. He brushed the last bits of dusty blood from his palms, and his hands were clean.

He looked down at the notes, but again before he could read them, something drew his attention.

That something was a person kicking open the door and barging into the room.

Jaune threw himself out of his chair and pulled the pistol out from his jacket, brandishing the gun at this intruder in a well-practiced reaction. He lowered the barrel as soon as he saw who it was.

"Damn Steve, feeling jumpy?" Qrow asked. He also had his sword drawn, but after seeing Jaune was the only person in the room and realizing Jaune looked mostly unharmed aside from the couple of bandages on his face, he lowered his weapon as well. He didn't sheathe it.

"What the hell you doing in this place?" Qrow asked, meandering further into the room and taking in the dusty, decrepit little storehouse.

"It's a good place to hide for a bit," Jaune said. "How'd you find me?"

Qrow pointed to the table. Jaune's scroll rested beside the papers. "We keep a small tracking device in every school-issued scroll. Besides the apps that keep track of aura and have secured communication, we want to make sure we can keep tabs on the kids."

"And not tell us?" Jaune felt the familiar prickle of paranoia across his skin.

"Well, if we told people, then by law we'd have to give them the choice to opt out," Qrow said with a shrug. He put his sword's point on the ground and leaned on it casually. "So we just don't tell them. Took us a bit to figure out how to track peoples' scrolls right now, since the monitoring system is back in Beacon. But hey, you'd be surprised how you can rig a few computers."

Jaune looked Qrow. He glanced to the papers on the table.

"What you got there?" Qrow asked, following Jaune's eyes to the notes.

Jaune stepped in front of the table, blocking sight of them. A bad feeling was forming in the pit of his stomach, and he didn't know what to do.

"Just what have you been up to?"

He had been working out a plan with Neo. They had learned from their prisoner that he had been given orders to search a number of warehouses by a leader of a different protection squad. He and Neo were now going to track down that man, then force him to tell them everything he knew. So on and so forth, until potential leads in Vale were exhausted. Time was of the essence, and neither wanted to waste it by trying to rope in too many other people, such as his team, Beacon's staff or the authorities they did not trust. It would also be good to have a partner right now rather than go it solo considering the sad physical state each was in. Then they would go their separate ways.

He told Qrow none of this.

Jaune gulped again, words clogging and sticking in his throat like unchewed bones. He had been caught red-handed in a way much more severe than sneaking a hand in the cookie jar. He didn't want to tell Qrow what he had done. He didn't want to tell his team what he had done. In that moment of panic, he realized some of the real reasons he was investigating with Neo.

Was he being a coward? Again.

"You told us you'd be back soon," Qrow said, "but then didn't say when or why you were gone or, hell, answer any questions at all. You send that text and then not look at your scroll again?"

Yes.

"You know if you did that to a girl after ditching her on a date she'd break up with you…"

Qrow looked over Jaune's shoulder and saw the lone chair. He noticed the dark red around it. Slowly, he looked back to Jaune.

"What did you do?"

"Information."

"From who, about what?"

"From some goon, about what's going on."

"What's going on?"

"Yeah."

Qrow sighed. He looked between the chair, then back to Jaune. Whether real or imagined, Jaune felt like he was disappointed.

The anger Jaune then felt almost surprised him.

He crossed his arms. "What, isn't this what you recruited me for? Didn't you want somebody cold-hearted who kill and fight people if he needed to? Don't judge me now for doing just that."

"I didn't…" Qrow sighed. "Kid I'm not judging you… I guess I just…"

"What?"

"I don't know."

Jaune narrowed his eyes. "Tell me."

"What?"

"Tell me everything that's going on," Jaune demanded. "I've known since the second you first talked me into coming to Beacon that you were hiding things from me"– he stepped closer to his mentor –"and now I want to know what. You recruited me because you wanted me for something, and all you said back then was that somebody got hurt and some war or something was going on. Now I want to know everything."

"Steve—"

"Don't fucking call me any stupid joke names," said the Lone Wanderer. "People are dead, and people I care about almost died." He narrowed his eyes, suspicions growing. "How long have you known about the Enclave?"

"As long as you have," Qrow said, honest. He looked down to the floor. "But…"

"But what?"

"Listen, let's just go back to the others and—"

"No!" Jaune said, stamping his foot on the ground. "I'm tired of being kept in the dark and being used! You didn't tell me shit after the attack on the dance, you didn't tell me shit after the Breach and you're not telling me shit right now!"

"Listen kid, you don't always have to get aggressive—"

"Yes I do! Because otherwise"– he squeezed his pistol, finger still off the trigger –"I just keep being this chump who gets dragged around and used! Well I wanna see the whole picture and make some of my own damn choices!"

Qrow eyed his student's gun warily for a second, the spoke in a more conciliatory tone. "Alright, I get that you must be frustrated."

Jaune scowled.

"And yeah, if I were you, then I'd want to know everything that's going on too."

"So tell me."

"Listen—"

"I'm listening."

Qrow cocked an eyebrow. Jaune wasn't willing to give anything. Maybe Neo would be back soon, but he didn't care. Right here, right now, he was going to be told what he wanted to be told. No more waiting.

"Alright…" Qrow sighed. "It's kind of a long story, but I can give you the quick version. There's a few forces at play who are, or at least were, working together. That was the White Fang, the Enclave, some criminals and… Salem."

"Salem?"

"She…" Qrow trailed off, nervously looking away. He forced himself back on track after noticing Jaune's scowl. "She used to be a huntress working for Beacon. Emphasis on used to be. But she had a semblance that let her sense Grimm—or so we thought.

"In reality, her semblance brought her closer to Grimm than that. She could feel them, work with them, even control them. Eventually, she snapped. Went absolutely nuts. From then on, she made it her goal to destroy Beacon, Ozpin and all of us."

"What do you mean by us?"

"I mean…" Qrow sighed deeply, and the look on his face was that of a man struggling deeply to do something that all his nerves told him not to do. It was the same expression that comes upon a person when told to let themselves fall straight back into someone else's arms—a natural and complete unwillingness.

"So you've got this crazy lady who's out to kill us all," Jaune said, raising his voice, "and never thought to tell anybody?" He bristled. His sweaty grip on the pistol tightened.

"There's a lot of good reasons for us keeping some things secret—"

"Who is us?" Jaune demanded.

"The Brotherhood of Steel."

Jaune's breathe hitched. If he had a heart, it would have skipped a beat; as it were, his filter continued as normal even as the body around it tensed in surprise and horror. Jaune could have been hit in the hit with a sledgehammer in that moment and he hardly would have noticed, given just how shocked he was.

"The Brotherhood is almost a thousand years old," Qrow continued. "Now it's basically the headmasters of the four schools and their trusted allies. Our goal is to keep Remnant safe by taking out bad guys and making sure that the wrong things don't fall into the wrong hands.

"Now listen, that's really all that I can tell you…"

Jaune narrowed his eyes. Of course. The muscles all through his arms clenched and shook with angry purpose. It made sense now. Some humans had come to Remnant a thousand years and messed everything up; they blew up the moon, spread their language, domineered with their technology and made something new. If there was any group from Earth that could do that, it would be the Brotherhood.

The same Brotherhood that had dragged him to his original ruin. If only he hadn't been amazed by the knights in hulking suits of armor. If only he hadn't trusted them to have this back when they attacked the Enclave's base.

If only he had realized they were an insular, elitist and ultimately untrustworthy bunch that would never really be on his side. They had produced bastards like the Outcasts and automatons like Sarah. The best among them was Elder Lyons himself, but who knew what direction they would break off in after his death. To the core, their organization was not interested in people, only themselves and their mission.

Jaune had vowed he would not work under them ever again.

Breathe deep. Hold. Release.

He got a grip of himself; fueled by steely new focus, he spoke in a low and cold tone.

"How big is the Brotherhood?" he asked, cutting off Qrow just as he was asking him to come with him again.

"What?"

"How big, how strong are you?"

"Well," Qrow shrugged. "We're a pretty influential group. The headmasters of the main four schools and different trusted hunters." He shook his head. "To be honest, we used to be a lot bigger, but that was a long time ago."

"Right."

"And the Enclave," he continued, "they actually have some history with us."

Jaune grit his teeth. Just how much did they know about their true origins?

"The Brotherhood was founded around a thousand years ago, by who and why we're not totally sure. But even as far back as then, there was a group called the Enclave that fought us. Now we thought that we beat them all the way back then, but I guess that somehow, someway, they managed to live on. And here we are."

So, they know nothing.

Jaune's scowl only deepened. These people weren't even really the Brotherhood. Just a hollow copy of whatever had come over a long, long time ago.

"And you let all this happen." His eyes hardened with old hate.

"Hey—"

"And you used me." His voice became darker.

"Listen—"

"And you lied to me." His tone became more hostile.

"Just listen—"

"Am I wrong?" asked the Lone Wanderer.

"Okay Steve, let's just get on the same page—"

"Don't fucking call me that!" he yelled. The Lone Wanderer clutched his pistol dangerously. "You think this is a fucking joke?"

"No I don't," Qrow said, reaching out a conciliatory hand, like he was trying to calm a growling dog. "That's not at all—"

Jaune's breath quickened. "I'm done following anybody's orders."

"Jaune, if you'll just listen to me—"

"And you're still not telling me everything, aren't you!"

"Listen to me!" Qrow shouted back, finally losing his patience. "Yeah, I can't exactly tell you everything I know about everything, some things are secret for a reason. Just fucking trust me, kid."

"I won't trust the Brotherhood again!" Jaune spat out spitefully—before he realized what he had just said.

But before Qrow could process those words completely, both were drawn out of their heated conversation when the front door's old hinges rattled. Jaune saw Neo looking through.

Qrow whipped around, sword brandished. He had turned his back to Jaune. Jaune who—in moments of great tension and heated emotion—was not immune to taking rash and violent action.

He swung his pistol and smashed it into the side of Qrow's skull so hard that the gun itself shattered. Qrow's aura, on guard but depleted from the last day, warped and proved unable to fully deter the sneak attack. He sprawled to the floor in a shower of broken metal and loose bullets, out cold.

By the time he woke up, the Lone Wanderer was gone.

"Fuck!" Jaune yelled. "Fuck!" He hit the dashboard with his fist, cracking the plastic and shaking the whole car.

Neo frantically waved her hand at him with a confused and angry scowl on her face. Without words, it was the clearest way for her to tell him to calm the hell down. She struggled to keep her foot pressed down on the gas, keep her eyes on the road and keep Jaune from tearing their car apart all at once. Their stolen car wobbly sped through the rundown midnight streets.

"Damn it!" Jaune yelled, fueled by the need to hit something. "Fuck!" He smashed an elbow through the car window, shattering the glass and inviting the whipping wind into the car.

Neo frantically smacked his shoulder to get him to stop; when he swatted her hand away, she snarled and reached over further to smack him in the chest.

"Gah!" Jaune clenched all his muscles in pain as his chest wound flared up again unbearably. He barely registered a blasting horn just in front of them or the bright lights headed their way.

The car lurched like a bucking horse as Neo desperately yanked on the wheel. They had veered into the oncoming lane during Jaune's panic, nearly ramming straight into a truck that surely would have totaled them. They swerved out of the way just as the truck did, barely avoiding the accident. Neo struggled to get the car back under control, and then pressed the acceleration again. She knew that they needed to get as far away as they could, fast.

She still cast Jaune a nasty look or two, making sure he got the point to calm the hell down.

The pain from Neo slapping him and the shock of nearly smashing into a truck managed to knock Jaune back into some sense.

Breathe deep. Hold. Release.

"What the hell…"

Had he just done? Had he really let his own anger make him do that to Qrow? Well, yes, obviously that is precisely what he had done. Jaune rubbed his temples, overwhelmed.

They peeled off onto a bigger street, here Neo brought them up above eighty miles an hour, which made the old car they had stolen whine. Keeping her eyes on the road now, she kept one hand on the steering wheel and used the other to snap her fingers, drawing Jaune's attention. Then she rolled her hand in the gesture people make for others to continue talking. She wanted an explanation.

So Jaune gave her one, explaining that his mentor had tracked him using his scroll, only to then admit that he had been a manipulative liar and a part of an organization Jaune didn't trust.

By the time he finished, Neo had gotten them down into a denser part of the city with tall, bulky buildings. By ignoring the speed limit they had gotten pretty far away pretty quickly. She brought them off the highway and navigated through the maze of Vale's buildings to park on the side of a dim street.

When they stopped, Neo let out a heavy breath. The cars exhausted engine was just about the only sound now. She tapped a finger against the wheel. She alternated between staring straight ahead out the window and glancing over to the broken window and crushed dashboard. She didn't look at Jaune himself.

Eventually, she pulled out her scroll, typed out a message and shoved it in his face:

Let's just finish this and then never see each other again.

Uh oh, Qrow didn't pass his speech checks. I never invest in charisma either, usually makes things less interesting by talking out of situations. Perhaps he could've corralled Jaune back to the rest if he hadn't mentioned the Brotherhood, but oh well.

And you know what, I wish I hadn't made the first thirty or so chapters of this story so cringe. I would change so much looking back.