In a burst of creative energy, I present to you yet another story idea!

Consider this my break from Ascendancy.

To Love One's Self

(Inspired by Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion and Not This Time Fate by Coeur Al'Aran)

The story begins as all stories do, with the main cast arriving at Beacon Academy to begin their new lives as Huntsmen and Huntresses in training.

However, there is one key difference in one of them, and that is with Jaune Arc.

That's right, this is another overpowered!Jaune Arc story, albeit with several key differences.

For one, a running trend of overpowered!Jaune fics is that they both make him confident in himself and a jerk as well, who regularly snarks and acts abrasive to other people, yet somehow gets all of the love and attention of the people around him just because he is overpowered and 'Cool' in their minds.

In essence, most overpowered!Jaune Arcs are turned into Jerk Sues or Marty Sues by their writers.

This version of Jaune Arc, however, does not act abrasive, rude, or sarcastic at all, but he does not act kind or dorky either. This version of Jaune Arc is actually emotionless, to an extent, and constantly projects a stoic and cold demenour that rather than attracts people to him actually unnerves them. Combined with his lack of humour and blunt honesty, never holding back on any of his words regardless of wherever they would hurt or help people, this all causes him to become a social outcast, due to feeling like they can't connect and relate to him, viewing him as more of a machine than a man.

Not only that, but most other overpowered!Jaune Arcs have some gamebreaker ability or completely broken semblance to empower them. This version of Jaune Arc has none of those. He only has his aura, his canon semblance, a sword, shield, and a simple, easily replaceable pistol to his arsenal, and relies more on his wits and creative thinking than his strength. In fighting, instead of using a massively overpowered semblance to annihilate his enemies, he focuses more on either quickly overpowering his opponents through multiple attacks, or just wearing them down through defensive attacks, using his semblance to tank their attacks before finishing off his exhausted opponents through a single swift attack.

However, then comes the final change from the typical overpowered!Jaune formula. Many overpowered!Jaunes are depicted as having a sharp degree of selfishness to them when they are not acting as generic protagonists (Personally, I blame Coeur for this trend of jerky Jaune protagonists, as a lot of his Jaunes tend to be a bit dickish, honestly). However, this version of Jaune Arc, by comparison, is completely selfless. Everything he does is in service to another person, without any consideration to himself. He is perfectly willing to injure himself in order to protect and help another person.

He's even willing to die in service to another.

But, with that selflessness also comes a dangerous degree of mercilessness, as many witness Jaune brutally maiming his opponents in battle, and even outright killing them, such as when he executes the Grimm in the Emerald Forest with a lack of care in his face, and then later on...

But we'll get to that later.

Right now, Jaune has passed the initiation, and, surprisingly to him, he is made leader of Team JNPR. However, instead of interacting with his teammates, he slinks off to be on his own most of the time, neglecting to sleep in their designated dorm room, and spending most, if not all, of his time either studying in the library or training in the fighting rings.

This begins to have a negative effect. His teammates begin to worry about him, but also feel resentment at his neglect of them, and try to confront him, only to either never find him, or, when they do, be shut down by an emotionless glare from him. However, they are all left confused on the days that they wake up late and their clothes and breakfasts have already been laid out for them, meaning that their supposed team leader is helping them, but he's just not present.

The Jaunedice arc straight up never happens because Jaune either deflects or just ignores all of Cardin's attempts to bully him, but he does take the time to teach Velvet to be more self-confident in order to stop her being harassed for being a Faunus, whilst also pointing Cardin out to her team leader to sort out. Eventually, Jaune becomes so focused on helping other people that he spends most of his time assisting others with their problems- Holding study sessions, fixing other people's equipment, etc. Rumours about Beacon's Helper Bot begin to swirl.

However, by the time that the Docks arc begins, Jaune is already at the door to RWBY's room, and as soon as Weiss and Blake's canon argument reaches its peak and Blake outs herself as not only a Faunus but a former member of the White Fang, he locks their door and breaks the handle to it, locking them all inside and allowing Jaune the chance to sneak out of Beacon and to the docks and intercept the White Fang himself.

However, instead of attacking the Fang, he simply hides himself in one of the crates of dust, and allows himself to be taken back to their headquarters, where they are stockpiling dust for their plans later.

And as soon as he is there, and as soon as he sees both Cinder, Roman, and their lackeys in the same place, Jaune sets fire to the dust crates in the warehouse, and blows it all to kingdom come.

And then, when he finds Cinder clinging on to life as she crawls out of the burning remains, her skin mottled with burns and her flesh peeling from her bones, Jaune just walks up to her...

And executes her.

Like said earlier, Jaune's selflessness had mixed with a sense of ruthless mercilessness, and though he shows endless consideration to those he considers his allies, he also shows no hesitation when it comes to dealing with his enemies, and is always quick to kill them without a second thought, wherever they surrender or not.

And so, Jaune returns to Beacon, refusing to get treatment for his wounds acquired from the warehouse explosion as to avoid answering any awkward questions, as well as allowing other people to get treatment for their wounds as well. It is in Beacon that he waits and makes plans on how to counter the rest of Salem's forces when they arrive.

Oh yes, Jaune also knows about Salem.

Spooky.

Anyways, Jaune returns to his normal routine of helping everyone in Beacon, fixing their weapons and assisting in their studies and training and so forth, and despite his cold and emotionless demeanour, many people begin to warm up to him and look past their previous thoughts of him being a creepy machinelike person thanks to him being so endlessly altruistic.

See, the problem with most overpowered!Jaune fics, or even just a lot of Jaune fics as well, is that when he is loved by all, he rarely does anything to actually earn that title. However, here, he has to work incredibly hard to gain that status, even despite not wanting it, and because of his endless altruism, even though he does not display his emotions to them, many in Beacon slowly find themselves growing more attached to him, not because the story demands it, but because he is always working for and helping others, even at the expense of himself.

Eventually, he even begins to moonlight as an official Huntsman to a local guild, disguising himself and keeping his identity under wraps, whilst also using his superior skills to sell himself as a Huntsman, so that he can not only assist innocent people at the best of his abilities, but also keep track of Salem's agents and the Grimm gathering around Vale.

However, he still incites problems within Beacon, even if unintentionally. He is still neglectful of his own team, and this begins to breed tension between the two sides. This also begins to reflect on their grades, as they haven't worked together enough to form any kind of bond, and he has always done his best to avoid them, creating problems that the staff of Beacon begin to take notice of. Not only that, but because he is always spending tine either training, studying, or helping people without any rest, his grades begin to suffer, and his place in the academy is called into question.

And to add onto those problems, because of his completely altruistic nature, he begins to neglect his own health and safety in service of others, to the point of skipping meals and sleep in order to assist the other students, be they original Beacon Academy applicants or transfers for the Vytal Festival. It gets to the point where the other students have to force him to sleep, practically tying him down to the bed in order to do so, and have to force-feed him at points because he just straight up refuses to eat.

Then, the bigger consequences of his self-destructive habits begins to rear their ugly heads. Soon, Ozpin learns about him moonlighting as a Huntsman, and informs the guild. As soon as they learn of this, they remove his subscription from the guild, kick him out, and hand him over to the police, sentencing him to juvenile hall and community service for a short period of time. As skilled as Jaune might be, he is still a seventeen year old and a student, not to mention incredibly self-destructive and neglectful of his own wellbeing. Giving him a pass and a licence to be a Huntsman right now would not only be illegal, but grossly amoral, and Jaune has still committed a serious crime that he needs to pay for.

Then, when he arrives back at Beacon after his short sentence, he is informed that because of his illegal moonlighting, as well as his neglect of his own team, grades, and health, he is to be removed from Beacon Academy by the end of the term.

Finally, just to hammer in the last nail in the coffin, the infection that had been building in his ignored and untreated wounds had finally compromised his immune system, and he collapses to the ground.

In spite of having been in prison and losing a lot of trust from the students because of it, said students still come together to help the person that has helped them so much, but find that Jaune himself doesn't understand why they are helping him- Why they care so much.

They say that it should be obvious. To him, it isn't.

And then they find the scars on his arms- The single slits that run up the wrists.

Jaune drifts in and out of consciousness for over a month, growing closer and closer to the end of the term and his expulsion from Beacon, becoming delirious and mumbling to himself about things that have never happened and people that never existed, and all that anyone can do is look on and lament as Beacon's emotionless, yet helpful soon-to-be ex-student is left to waste away and die.

But soon, he recovers, and discovers that much as happened whilst he was bedridden.

Salem and her armies, in retaliation to Cinder's failure and demise, had finally abandoned all pretence and overrun the other three kingdoms, stolen the relics from their academies, and was now on her way to Vale.

It was here that Jaune finally expressed an emotion...

And that was despair.

And so, the truth was revealed, and the reality of Jaune was finally revealed.

He's a time traveller.

He came from a timeline in which everything had gone wrong. Beacon had fallen, as had all the kingdoms, and Salem had stood triumphant as the world crumbled to ash and dust around them...

And Jaune was the one sent back to save it.

So he tried, but failed, so he tried again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again and again and again and so on, so forth.

How many times had he gone back in time? He didn't know. He'd long since lost count after five hundred.

The point was that he had gone back in time and relived the same events over and over and over again, in a never-ending cycle of life and death, trying to carry the burden of the world and change its fate constantly, only to fail and be sent back in time, completely unable to change anything as he lived and died endlessly, so much so that it began to break down and erode his sanity. Eventually, he was so insane that he reverted right back to sanity, and became numb to the world around him, dead, a walking corpse of a man.

It was why he acted so emotionless. He was just tired at this point. He wasn't cheerful, or cynical. He was just exhausted, and wanted it to end.

But he was stopped on his quest for release from life by the three things that kept him going- That fuelled his quest to save the world.

His empathy, his love... And his self-hatred.

As much as he and everyone else thought he was, Jaune Arc was not emotionless. Not completely, at least. The only things left driving him were his empathy, love, and self-loathing, all of which have not decreased over the years, but increased. His empathy for other people, both human and Faunus, has only increased over the constant years of looping, especially after losing so many loved ones after so many more time loops. By the time that the story has reached its presence, Jaune has reached total empathy for every living being on the planet, and practically breaks down at the thought of a single person dying, which he is barely able to hide behind his stoic facade.

However, that also ties into his ruthlessness, and how he executes Cinder and her lackeys. He kills them, but he feels like absolute shit afterwards, and spends over an hours vomiting into a sink and slitting his wrists because of it.

This feeling of extreme empathy also ties into his love, and that which he feels for both his teammates and those he once called friends and allies in all of those other timelines. He loves them all so much, he really does. He just hides it all behind his stoic demeanour, and hides himself away from them in fear of hurting them.

That's why he avoids his teammates as much as possible. He just doesn't want his loved ones to get hurt by or because of him anymore, or waste their time on someone that he views as worthless.

And there is the final nail in the coffin for Jaune: His self-hatred.

There is only one person in the world that he does not either love or care for...

Himself.

Jaune Arc hates himself. He loathes his own being as a worthless failure due to never being able to save anyone, no matter what he does or how much he changes in each and every loop. By the time that the story has reached its present, any sense of worth that he feels for himself has been reduced to ashes and nothingness, and has been replaced with vile self-hatred and scorn directed inwards. He does not love himself, and if the time ever comes that he succeeds and finally breaks the endless loops...

He plans to hook his pistol to his throat and finally end it all.

And he believes that the others will rejoice at his passing.

And herein lies the truth behind this fic: It is a deconstruction of not just the overpowered!Jaune fic, but the standard time travel fic as well, where it is said in the background of those stories that the main character has gone through either a single or multiple time loops, and how much those loops would begin to break down their sanity and self-worth, reducing them to an almost-emotionless state that feels nothing for the world around them, completely numb to everything that they had once set out to do, including even revenge, once they reached their breaking point.

And Jaune has finally reached his, because as he listens to the reports and the news of Salem's coming arrival, something in him just...

Snaps.

He's had enough. He's tried again and again, and it's done nothing. He has tried again and again and again, and because of his pathetic self, he could never do anything.

No more.

No more...

So, on the day that Jaune Arc was to be removed from Beacon Academy, Salem reaches Vale, and she and Ozpin do battle. The Huntsmen and Huntresses of Beacon do battle against the Grimm and their allies, and in the middle of it all wades Jaune Arc though the mud and muck, face covered in shadows and unbridled sins.

Into the battle he wades, and through his superior skills and fighting styles, he is able to overpower both Salem and Ozpin's lieutenants, and grabs the four Relics whilst the two demigods are busy fighting each other.

But Jaune does not return them to Beacon. He does not return them to the Grimm.

He has reached the end of his rope.

He's done playing by the god's rules.

Now, they were going to play by his.

His sanity finally shredded to pieces, Jaune takes the relics for himself, and ascends. He tears into the gods, and takes their power for himself.

He transcends his mortal form, and becomes the new god of Remnant.

And he uses that power to change the world entirely.

Declaring himself to be the devil of the new world, his self-loathing demanding punishment for his actions, Jaune completely erases the old Remnant, and constructs a new one in its place, creating his familiars in the forms of the Wardens of Sin, each member made to reflect one of the Seven Deadly Sins, to help him govern and watch the new world.

Now, in this new Remnant, there would be no Grimm or Huntsmen. There would be no aura or semblances. There would be no need for such silly things.

Now it was a happy world. A world where its people, and the ones that he loved the most, could finally live the lives that they were always meant to have: One of peace and tranquility, and endless virtue.

A world without angst or sadness. A world without evil or imperfection.

A perfect one.

And it would be a world which Jaune would deny himself a part in.

This would be their heaven, and his hell. He would force himself to watch as he erased his own existence from the minds of his friends and family, and pushed himself into an impossible decision, as his own punishment for his sins and failures:

If he chose to live, then he would have to watch the people he loved move on and lives entirely new, and peaceful lives, without him.

But if he chose to kill himself, then everything that he worked hard to build would vanish, and those he cared about would be forced back into the death world that is Remnant, only without him to help them and restart the loops.

A self-inflicted hell.

This is one of this Jaune Arc's greatest flaws: He is selfless, yes. but he is also incredibly selfish. He wishes to hoard all of the responsibility, all of the hardship and pain and burdens, all to himself, and allow his loved ones none of it, despite how much they might protest for his sake. Because Jaune Arc does not love himself, he believes that if he is the only one who suffers, then everything else will be okay, and everyone else will be happy in this new world that he has made for them.

But it is a fragile world.

And soon, it begins to shatter.

One by one, the people that he once called friends and family begin to remember. Not just their previous life, but every life after that. Every single loop that Jaune Arc has lived through, they remember everything. They see his pain, his hatred of himself, and everything that he is burdening onto himself...

And they choose to shatter this fantasy world, and show him the real one.

They come together, and break the illusion. They storm his godly walls and defeat his sins. They confront their new god, on his lonely throne made of his own pain and torment, and they show him the person that they themselves love the most:

Himself.

There is a saying constantly repeated in this story: "You can't love someone until you love yourself."

This is the moral of this story, and it is the question that those that care about Jaune force him to confront and answer.

Because, for all of his talk about loving them, how can he see the value in others if he cannot see the value in himself?

Ultimately, this is why those that care for him choose to reject his perfect world.

Because a world that is built on suffering, even if it is self-inflicted, is not a world worth living in.

Jaune, of course, is confused, and asks them- Demands, and even gets on his knees and begs for them to stay in this new world that he has created for them. They don't need him. They never needed a worthless scumbag like him, so why are they denying themselves this perfect world- An arcadia, a utopia- All just for the sake of him.

And they reply that they don't want to abandon the one that they love.

So they show him. They show him all that he has done for them, over each and every loop. They show him the relationships that he has built, the friends he's made, the lovers he has had, and all of the joy and happiness that he has brought to the world, even at the expense of himself.

And even though these worlds and timelines have fallen, it is shown to be all because of one simple reason:

Because he chose to stand alone, out of hatred for himself, rather than together, with others, out of the love that they might share.

Those that love and cherish him choose to stand by his side, share in his pain and suffering, and be the thing that he can anchor onto when he is pain- Be the ones that he can rely on, that he can learn from to see in himself what they themselves can see.

And finally, Jaune Arc relents, and gives them what they want.

He lets go of his power, and the world resets.

A fresh start. A new loop.

Only this time, Jaune Arc is not alone.

Because everyone else has come back with him.

From Ruby to Yang, Neon to Nora, and so many more. All of those that have loved and cared for Jaune find him in Beacon, and stand by his side, all of them as equally powerful as him from all that they know and have experienced, ready to share with him the pain of facing Salem and her minions.

And together, they do the impossible.

They defeat her, once and for all.

Salem is gone, because they chose to stand together. Salem and her minions and her Grimm are vanquished from the world, left to turn to dust and ash as Remnant begins to move on without them.

And Jaune Arc finally begins to see what they see in him, after so very long.

In order to love another, he finally begins to love himself.

Thus, this story ends.