Ok... thought Jaune pensively, as he watched Ruby approach across the ballroom floor. If it worked before... mostly, then I'll just...

"You doing OK there Jaune? You sounded pretty off... I mean, shouting and all."

Jaune smiled. Rinse and repeat...

"Yeah..." rinse, "just a bad dream." And repeat.

That wasn't to say he kept everything the same however. Upon heading towards the bathroom, he managed to remember the brutish student from earlier, and sidestepped just before he would have been roughly pushed aside. The boy swept onwards, ignoring his motions. Jaune smirked to himself. Seems I can change some things, and for the better. Fingers crossed I can keep the good stuff going.

Making his way quickly to the cafeteria after washing, he once again secured himself a glistening stack of pancakes. As an afterthought, and with a wicked gleam in his eye, he grabbed an apple as well.

Sitting down, he closed his eyes in silent bliss, waiting until the last moment.

"No!" He declared, as he stabbed his fork into the stack, just as they were being tugged away by a thieving ginger-haired girl. The ginger-haired girl, it seemed.

She looked at him with eyes widened, before pouting impishly. The green-clad boy on the nearby table looked over with a raised eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing, even as she glared at him. The girl threw her hands up in defeat, and moaned.

"How did you even see that! I've been stealing these for years, and not even REN can stop me. Well, most of the time. He gets me sometimes. But that takes YEARS of practice!" Jaune laughed.

"I have seven sisters. If you think you're bad, you should see their tricks." Jaune spoke with a wry grin on his face, before blanking. "Now shoo. I need these more than you." When Nora resumed pouting, his face became maleficent. "Here, you can have this." He proffered the apple he picked up earlier, much to her disgust. She promptly fled, and began complaining the boy Jaune presumed was either her brother... or a very close friend; he was sporting an amused look on his face, which had appeared around the same time as the apple.

Jaune resumed consuming his breakfast, before heading towards the lockers.

From there, events proceeded as close to the last attempt as possible. The only change seemed to be his ability to run for longer before becoming drastically winded, though it seemed to change little in the grand scheme of things. He was still desperately running from the Deathstalker, and Pyrrha still took a flight on the claw express. The only change occurred when they had finally reached the inferior version of the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm.

Jaune once again found himself stranded on one side of the bridge, watching as Blake, Ren and Pyrrha tried to fend off the Deathstalker. Drawing his sword and shield, he bent his knees and was promptly flung across the narrow gap exuberantly at Nora's behest. This time however, he managed to execute a clumsy-but-effective roll upon landing, and rose sharply.

This time, when the scorpion attempted its stab, he sidestepped to the right and allowed the blow to skirt off his shield. This time he followed with a badly executed slash to the stinger joint, which did almost nothing but scratch the segmented tail. However, this momentarily distracted the beast for long enough to give them a brief respite.

Noticing that Weiss, Ruby and Yang were also stranded, and dealing with another, equally dangerous grimm, Jaune looked around, and realised that the quiet, raven-haired girl was best suited to assist, with her... gun... thing. God I need to learn this stuff...

"Uh... Blake! Help them! We've got this covered... probably. Use your thingy!" Blake quirked an eyebrow. Jaune gestured wildly at her weapon, and she rolled her eyes before nodding. Jaune also seemingly needed to work on giving concise orders. Sighing, he returned his focus to the fight in front of them, and saw Ren dangling from the stinger and targeting the joint with his gun as he did, damaging it far more successfully than Jaune ever could. He flinched as he watched the boy get thrown towards a pillar, smashing into it with a loud, resounding thump. His gaze hardened. Noticing the stinger was hanging by a thread, he decided on a plan.

This time he bashed one of the claws away with his shield as it was about to strike Nora, and pointed at the stinger.

"Pyrrha!" She followed his finger and threw her shield with astounding, almost magical accuracy, severing the loose connection and dropping the heavy stinger point first into the Deathstalker's carapace, where it stood embedded, protruding like a...

Jaune narrowed his eyes.

"Nora, nail it!"

With gleeful abandon, the girl, using Pyrrha's assistance, launched herself high into the air, and came crashing down with an almighty blow, driving the point home, and through the creature. The bridge beneath them shook, and began to crumble. The three remaining students leapt over the carcass of the scorpion, and onto safer ground. Nora landed gleefully on her rear, Pyrrha performed a most perfect superhero landing (in Jaune's opinion anyway) and Jaune... landed. Ren staggered over and promptly collapsed next to them.

Jaune stood slowly, in awe that he'd come this far. This time, he'd survived the Deathstalker, and while it had certainly taken far more attempts than anyone else could possibly have in the first place, he'd still done it. He was proud. This time, he was still alive.

And then he turned and gazed with a mixture of awe and disgruntled admiration as Ruby decapitated the colossal bird Grimm that had been hounding them since the temple. As its headless corpse collapsed into the valley below, he grumbled under his breath. "Bet I could do that... if I tried enough times... stupid aura."

Breaking out of his reverie, he grinned and chose to begin cheering, which Nora promptly picked up on excitedly. Ren and Pyrrha joined in with calmer applause, but honest nonetheless. Jaune's grin slowly faded as he looked back at the cliff.

"So... how do we get back to Beacon?"

The others laughed at his obvious jest. Jaune frowned.

"No, seriously."

A good deal of time later - and with aching legs - Jaune was stood in the great hall as Ozpin announced the formation of teams.

"-team CRDL, lead by Cardin Winchester."

There was dutiful applause as the giant ginger boy left the stage, while looking quite smug. Jaune made a note to avoid him if possible, as he seemed fairly arrogant. His musings were interrupted by Professor Ozpin announcing his name.

"Jaune Arc, Lie Ren, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward you will work together as... Team Juniper." At this, Nora cheered, and hugged Ren. Inwardly, Jaune smiled. Those two really were very close. He nearly missed the end, due to his thoughts.

"Lead by..." Pyrrha's gonna be a great leader. "Jaune Arc." Jaune was shocked out of his thoughts, his face pale and eyes wide.

"Me? What? L-lead by...?" He asked in confusion, while Pyrrha looked positively joyous at this turn of events. Ozpin smirked.

"Congratulations, young man." Jaune was broken out of his confused state by a firm - but well intentioned - punch by Pyrrha, which knocked him on his backside. There was some laughter, but he didn't pay attention. Why me? What did I do to deserve being leader?

Leaving the stage to make way for the formation of team RWBY (lead by Ruby Rose, much to the seeming chagrin of Weiss and the jubilant pride of Yang), he shook his head as he cheered. I hope I can do this... but it's not like I can fail, I guess... right? Pyrrha spoke to him gently.

"Well done Jaune, you should be proud. I'm glad we'll be together." She finished with a beaming smile. Jaune responded with a nervous smile, and a self-consciously-mumbled "Thanks".

After the ceremony, the team headed to their room. They were happy to find themselves opposite RWBY: as the teams had performed closely during initiation, this seemed ideal for them. Jaune suspected this may have been planned, but without proof he chose to ignore that possibility.

At the end of the long day - far longer for Jaune than the rest, it had to be said - the teams retired and tried to divvy up the beds. It went fairly successfully, although Nora attempted to claim all of them for herself initially. After a withering look from Ren, she settled with the one next to his, while Pyrrha and Jaune were likewise close by.

After changing and necessary ablutions were done, the members of the newly formed JNPR retired to bed. Jaune sat for a while, contemplating the events of what he had begun to think of as one day.

I made it. But... will I have to do that again? Is this... going to happen again? If I die, will I start at that same point, or will it change, or is that game over now I'm done with initiation? What if-

"Jaune?"

He looked up at Pyrrha's open face. She was facing him, with a look of mild concern. Ren had passed out as soon as he fell into his bed, and Nora was snoring gently as well.

"Hmm?"

"Are you OK?" She was guileless in her question. It was... nice, he thought.

"Yeah... just..." He contemplated talking openly there and then, but would she believe him? He doubted it. He could barely believe it himself. He decided on a half-truth. "I'm just amazed I got through that. That we all did." He smiled. "I'm glad we're here." She gave a tired smile back.

"I am as well. Get some sleep, we need our leader in top form after-" she yawned, interrupting herself. "-after all. Goodnight Jaune." She finished sleepily. He smiled back, and lay down on his bed.

"Goodnight Pyrrha. And thanks... for everything."

She mumbled something incoherently, and Jaune's smile returned. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

His only hope was that he woke in this bed the next day.

It's over. It's FINALLY OVER. No more forest!

...until the forever fall arc. Which I promise will absolutely suck like it does every time.

So, generally speaking, whenever you see "this time" in italics, it's probably worth assuming that Jaune died around there. Because writing the same death in five different ways is not fun.

Thanks for reading!

Jaune opened his eyes slowly, with a smile on his face. He'd done it. He'd survived, and now he was in Beacon proper! Nothing could-

He froze.

His face morphed into a visage of sheer horror.

"No..." he whispered.

The curtains.

"No." He was louder this time.

The windows.

"No!" He was on the verge of shouting.

The staircase.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He wailed, before sobbing into his hands in utter, haunting despair.

And when Ruby walked over to comfort him, she became very confused and self-conscious when he froze at the sight of her, before crying even louder.

Whoops.