Fanfic / Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path

Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path, also known as FE3H5P or simply Fifth Path, is a Fire Emblem: Three Houses Peggy Sue fanfic by BackSet (also known as BackSet1).

Following the perceived deaths of King Dimitri and Emperor Edelgard, Byleth accidentally tries to use the Divine Pulse but forgets to choose a destination, resulting in time being frozen and her being trapped in a black void. For anyone else, this would probably be the end...but not for Byleth. She had always been skilled at turning bad situations into good ones; she had managed to turn a five-year war around in just one year, after all. So, using the power of Sothis (who, as it turns out, was alive this whole time), she bypasses the Divine Pulse's 12-hour limit and travels back in time to when she first met the House Leaders, with the intent of keeping the war from ever happening.

What follows is a series of misadventures that Byleth hopes will bring Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard closer together instead of farther apart.

The story can be found here, here, and here. There is also an ongoing collection of short stories set in the same universe called Fifth Path Supports. It can be found here, here, and here.

This fanfic contains examples of:

• Adaptational Comic Relief: Due to the fic's (mostly) lighter tone, characters who weren't comic relief before tend to become funnier. Most notably, Byleth and Hilda. Byleth makes way more jokes, while Hilda has become a Butt-Monkey.
• Adaptational Modesty: Byleth's outfit is reportedly much more conservative, at least according to the author's note.
• Adaptational Personality Change: A few characters are slightly different from their canon counterparts:
  • In canon, Byleth is serious, silent, and rarely smiles or cracks jokes, even after experiencing character development. In this fic, Byleth, having come from such a bleak future, has become loud and outgoing, and loves cracking jokes. (Maybe even more than Alois.)
  • Hilda also undergoes a personality change, though not to the extent of Byleth. While she is still lazy, she is also mildly ADHD-affected and has difficulty sitting still. Additionally, while in canon she's usually in control of the situation and is a master manipulator, here she's rarely in control, finding herself in uncomfortable or dangerous situations because of the actions of others.
• Adaptation Name Change: Not a character but a type of magic. Due to being easily confused with the similarly named Dark Magic, Black Magic's name was changed to Elemental Magic.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Jeralt attempts to do this to Byleth, but both of them agree that it's weird and he should never do it again.
• The Adjectival Superhero: Like in the source material, Balthus frequently refers to himself as "The [Adjective] King of Grappling."
• Anachronism Stew: While this fic, like its source material, doesn't take place in the real world, the setting is supposed to be medieval. Despite this, modern slang is used, and several technologies and items that would not logically have been invented yet, such as sticky notes and ice cream that comes in cartons, exist.
• Anti-Magic: Lysithea develops a very specific form of the Silence spell that only blocks teleportation. She used it twice, once to stop Hubert in the Mock Battle and once to stop the Death Knight from escaping. (That second time doesn't work.)
• Armor-Piercing Response: Though it doesn't last long, while Aelfric is defending his decision to attempt the ritual to bring Sitri back, Jeralt manages to say something that gives him pause:
  Jeralt: What would it cost? The lives of those kids? The lives of everyone in this room? What would it cost, Aelfric!?
  Aelfric: Who cares! All that matters is that I can bring her back!
  Jeralt: Sitri would have cared. Don’t you understand? In your delusional quest to bring her back, you’ve gone against everything she stood for.
• Author Appeal: The author has fully admitted that Byleth joining the Black Eagles was really just because it's his favorite house.
• Badass Teacher: Byleth, naturally. Messing with her students is usually a good way to get the crap beaten out if you, at best. She's especially protective because she already went through several of their deaths once, and refuses to go through it again.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the first Fifth Path Supports vignette, "Hubert Gets Detention", Byleth at first looks like she's threatening Hubert in response to him threatening her, but in reality she gives him detention. Of course, this outcome was obvious from the title, so the Bait-and-Switch is purely in-universe.
• Birthday Episode: Chapter 20 focuses on Byleth's birthday. Appropriately, the Chapter's title is "Byleth's Birthday."
• Blatant Lies: Of all people, Hubert regularly tells blatant lies, although given how he usually smirks when he does so it's pretty obvious the blatant-ness is intentional.
• Breather Episode: "Byleth's Birthday," particularly the latter half, is a much more chill and less dramatic chapter than the ones preceding it, which involved quite a bit of fighting and tragedy.
• Brought Down to Badass: When she travels back in time, Byleth loses the divine power she got from merging with Sothis. However, she's still "the second strongest Mercenary in Fódlan" (strongest after Jeralt dies), and "The Best Sword User in Fódlan", who can hold her own against the likes of the Death Knight with zero problems.
• Butt-Monkey: Hilda gradually starts finding herself in dangerous situations because of the actions of others.
• But Wait, There's More!: Byleth says this word for word in Chapter 7, which the narration Lampshades as "the first example of an infomercial saleswoman".
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Byleth almost always refers to Jeralt by his first name, and when she doesn't, she usually calls him "father" instead of "dad".
• Can't Hold His Liquor: The Fifth Path Supports vignette "Girl's Night Out" reveals Byleth is an extreme lightweight, going loopy after just one sip of alcohol.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Flame Emperor, aka Edelgard, pulls a reverse version of this on Solon when he not-so-subtly threatens her, pointing out he can't kill her because he still needs her.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Characters frequently hold conversations during battle, both with friends and enemies. One of the few times this doesn't happen is when Byleth fights the Death Knight, who doesn't talk all that much. This is lampshaded by Rhea in Chapter 19:
  Rhea: Are you always this talkative in battle?
  Byleth: Yeah, isn't everyone?
• Celibate Hero: Byleth is capable of feeling sexual attraction, being paralyzed by Yuri's good looks and acknowledging being attracted to people, and on one occasion flirts with Edelgard because she finds it funny, but simply isn't interested in love (and in the case of Edelgard, she's a minor so that also adds to her disinterest in that particular case).
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The fic will swing back and forth between comedy and somberness, sometimes within scenes of each other. Possibly the best examples are Chapters 18 and 19, which switch between sadness and humor often within the same scene.
• Character Exaggeration: Ingrid, in canon, is an Only Sane Woman, but she also has other traits, such as her enjoyment of food, her goal of becoming a knight, and her mild hypocrisy. However, in her three appearances so far, she has pretty much exclusively been an Only Sane Woman (with a dash of Butt-Monkey every now and then), and acts more like an Expy of Phoenix Wright than anything.
• Chandler's Law: Specifically invoked in Chapter 4, when Kostas turns into a Demonic Beast due to the author having written himself into a corner. To quote him:
  And that’s how you write yourself out of a corner! You throw in a giant monster and bam everything’s fixed!
• Chaste Hero: Dimitri doesn’t seem to understand sexual or romantic attraction, which results in him being unaffected when everyone else is distracted by Yuri’s sexy.
• Closest Thing We Got: Despite only being a student, Linhardt essentially becomes the team medic during the Ashen Wolves arc, due to being the only one of them with any medical knowledge or the ability to use healing magic.
• Coat Cape: Unlike in canon, where Byleth wears some kind of bizarre coat-cape hybrid thing that has you questioning what the costume department was thinking, her cape in this continuity is actually a coat.
• Colon Cancer: The title has two colons, qualifying it for this trope.
• Colossus Climb: In chapter 5, Byleth tries (and fails) to climb the Demonic Beast that was formerly Kostas. This trope is specifically name-dropped and linked in the Author's Note.
• Combat Stilettos: Averted. The Author's Note for Chapter 5 states that every female character, minus Manuela, has lost the heels that were part of their original outfit, as this is trope is a bit of a pet peeve for the author.
• Courtroom Episode: The "Turnabout Desserts" and "Turnabout Monster" vignettes in Fifth Path Supports are basically Ace Attorney-style court cases featuring Three Houses characters.
• Death Glare: Byleth is noted as being famous for this, but she only uses it a few times during the fic, and only two of those times were in a situation where she was mad.
• Denser and Wackier: While the source material was by no means bereft of comedy, it was nowhere near as common as it is in this fic, where every chapter has at least one, but usually more, jokes, sarcastic remarks, or physical comedy. Even the Supports, which already trended towards comedic in the game, are spectacularly more comedic, firing off jokes at a rapid speed (though not quite enough to count as Rapid-Fire Comedy).
• Department of Redundancy Department: Used occasionally for comedic effect:
  He swept his spear at the muscular guy’s feet, causing him to stumble, and then followed it up with a jab to the stomach from the spear’s blunt end. This didn’t work perfectly because the muscular guy was, well, really muscular but it did push him backwards.
• Detention Episode: The aptly-named chapter of Fifth Path Supports, "Detention with Professor Byleth", which covers four students being in detention.
• Didn't Think This Through: In the first chapter of Fifth Path Supports, Hubert makes an Implied Death Threat to his teacher. The fact that the chapter is titled "Hubert Gets Detention" should tell you how that one works out for him.
• Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: An odd example. In Chapter 13, Hubert makes a joke about the Knights of Seiros being useless, to which Dorothea comments that he's used it already. This is simultaneously a reference to a line he said in the game, and a callback to an earlier scene where Byleth imagined him saying the exact same line (which, of course, was also a reference to the line he said in the game).
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Because Byleth prevents Kronya from infiltrating the Monastery, Jeralt is instead killed in the fight against the Umbral Beast.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: In the chapter of Fifth Path Supports titled "Romantic Advice", Linhardt tries to deny having a crush on Lysithea after Hilda figures it out, but only manages to dig his own grave, something he acknowledges.
• Distracted by the Sexy: When they come across the Ashen Wolves, the newly christened "Best Friend Squad" (minus Dimitri) is paralyzed by how attractive Yuri is.
• Doctor's Orders: Linhardt, who is normally not the most intimidating person in the world, orders Balthus to sit out the battle between Aelfric's mages and the Best Friend Squad, and he does this so forcefully that Balthus actually listens.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: As shown in a flashback, Byleth's mother Sitri despised being treated like a delicate flower due to her condition.
• Dragged into Drag: Sylvain is forced to play the Maiden of Winds in a school play. At first it's stated that it's because there were no other roles, but eventually Dorothea (who was one of the brains behind the play) admits she just thought it would be funny.
• Dramatic Ellipsis: This fic is particularly fond of it, usually to represent hesitance in someone's speech. The narration will also occasionally mention this for comedic effect:
  There was a long silence. You could almost see the ellipses above them.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The early chapters (particularly the original prologue and the first chapter) tried to focus more on rapid fire comedy, with a higher joke-to-plot count than later, where the jokes, while still common, largely took a back seat to the plot, possibly due to a lot of the humor being moved to the Fifth Path Supports.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Like in canon, Edelgard is scared of rats. Claude actually (accidentally) uses his joke about there being a rat at her feet (moved forward to the Mock Battle from its original place in the Battle of Eagle and Lion) to defeat her.
• Enemy Mine: Byleth essentially bribes/blackmails Jeritza, aka the Death Knight, one of her most dangerous enemies, into protecting Flayn. Seteth is baffled by how this works.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • The vignettes in Fifth Path Supports love to do this, including such titles as "Hubert Gets Detention", which is about Hubert getting detention; "Detention with Professor Byleth", which is about four students being in a detention session that is overseen by Byleth; and "Claude's Arrow Making Lessons" which are about Claude giving arrow-making lessons to Ashe.
  • The main story also has quite a few of these such as Chapter 3's "The Mock Battle", which is about (what else?) the Mock Battle, and Chapter 4's "The Black Eagles’ First Mission", which is about the Black Eagles' first mission.
• Expressive Accessory: Justified. In the non-canon "Halloween Omake", Byleth got Annette to make a costume tail for her that actually reacted to her emotions.
• Fake Crossover: There’s an Omake that serves as a fan crossover with Zelda Universe’s Hades' Misguidance that is explicitly stated to not be canon to the fic’s universe.
• Filler: Chapter 8 is fully admitted to being filler (or a "glorified support" as the Author calls it), only existing to avoid having the characters figure out the Holy Mausoleum plot off-screen and contributing nothing of actual substance.
• Fog of War: Like in canon, the battle against Lord Lonato takes place in a magical fog.
• For Want Of A Nail: The nail in this fic actually happens before Byleth travels back in time. During the final scene of the Azure Moon route, instead of just standing idly when Dimitri accidentally kills Edelgard, Byleth interprets this as both of them killing each other and accidentally freezes time out of panic, thus resulting in her figuring out she can travel back in time to the beginning of the game's story. Whether Byleth's interpretation of the scene is correct is never stated.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Sothis is quite clearly aware that she's fictional, from little things like referring to Byleth as the protagonist, to large ones like outright stating she can hear the narration.
• Futile Hand Reach: Byleth does this a lot. In fact, it's how the story begins, with Byleth doing a Futile Hand Reach in response to Dimitri and Edelgard's deaths.
• The Gadfly:
  • Sothis enjoys teasing Byleth, but she generally doesn't mean anything malicious by it (aside from the beginning, where she was legitimately mad at Byleth for the Divine Pulse botch-up).
    Byleth: (Who's side are you on!)
    Sothis: The funny one.
  • Byleth has quite a bit of fun needling people, from coercing Ingrid into betting on Felix and Sylvain's love lives, to teasing Seteth when he personally comes to inform her that Rhea wants an audience with her.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: The aptly-titled vignette in Fifth Path Supports, "Girl's Night Out", in which Manuela convinces Byleth to come hang out with her, Catherine, and Shamir for a night on the town.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Naturally, Ingrid and Ferdinand constantly point at each other during the Ace Attorney-inspired support.
• Gratuitous Greek: For some reason, Claude occasionally slips into Greek, despite Greece not existing and him being half-Almyran, which is a culture more akin to the Middle East.
• Groin Attack: In canon, when Balthus assaults Yuri for lying and tricking them, he just punches him in the face. In the fic, he straight up knees Yuri in the crotch, causing him to double over in pain.
• Halloween Episode: A non-canon Omake takes place during Halloween.
• Hand Behind Head: Several characters preform this gesture at one point of another, but Byleth does it the most out of all of them.
• Haughty "Hmph": Felix does this so much the author invented a dialogue tag (hmph'd) for it.
• Height Angst: Byleth doesn't like it when her height (or lack thereof) is brought up or when people bend down to talk to her. She never comments on it out loud, but the narration gets her annoyance across pretty clearly.
  Manuela moved towards the wall and patted the seat next to her. “Well, what are you waiting for? Sit down.”
  Byleth obliged, sitting where Manuela had indicated. She tried to lean back and found that doing so resulted in her being at eye level with the table. As she sat back up she cursed her shortness.
• Hot Teacher: Byleth, of course. Despite her outfit apparently being toned down, she still "captured the hearts of more than half the academy’s student body", according to Seteth.
• Hypothetical Fight Debate: When Byleth comes across the three house leaders in Chapter 1, Claude and Edelgard are debating whether St. Macuil or St. Cichol, respectively, would win in a fight.
• Indy Ploy: Much like the author, Byleth confessed to Sothis that she has absolutely no idea on how to fix the future, and is making it up as she goes.
• Informed Flaw: Hilda is frequently referred to as being lazy by others, much like in the actual game, but is never actually shown as being lazy.
• Insane Troll Logic: Twice—once in the main story, and once in Fifth Path Supports.
  • In the main story, Byleth tries to invoke Loophole Abuse to let Ashe come along on the mission to defeat Lonato, by saying that they just said Ashe couldn't come, not the Blue Lions. This fails because it makes no sense, but Ashe gets to come anyways.
  • In the Fifth Path Supports vignette "Professor Shamir'', the Black Eagles and Shamir come across a garbled test question that would put Baldi to shame. The only person who can come up with an answer is Linhardt, whose thought process to get there baffles everyone, Hubert most of all.
• Insistent Terminology: A minor running gag is magic users insisting that they are mages, not wizards. Byleth exploits this to get Solon to out himself.
  • Sothis insists that she's nine and a half years old, not eight. (This is in spite of the fact that she's Really 700 Years Old.)
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite Byleth's best efforts, Lord Lonato still dies, though his manner of death (being shot through the head by a soldier working for the Flame Emperor, as opposed to being killed by one of the students) is different.
• I Think You Broke Him: In the Fifth Path Supports vignette "Professor Shamir", Linhardt makes up a patently absurd answer to a test question that makes no sense, causing Hubert to completely stop functioning.
  Petra: I am thinking that you have broken Hubert.
• I've Heard of That — What Is It?: In the Fifth Path Supports vignette "Flayn's Rescue", one of the two thieves accosting Flayn realizes that she's Seteth's sister, and thus they can ransom her off to him. The other thief is slow to catch on, but tries to pretend he understands.
  Mugger 2: Hold on a second. I recognize this girl. Isn’t she the sister of that guy?
  Mugger 1: Yeah, that guy. I definitely know what guy you’re talking about, but, just to refresh my memory, tell me about that guy.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: While Byleth doesn't have the same Fourth Wall Breaking skills as Sothis, she does get a leaning moment at the end of the prologue.
  Byleth: (Well, Here we are. It all begins here.)
  Sothis: I thought it began when you traveled back in time.
  Byleth:(That was more like a prologue. This is the real beginning.)
  Sothis: If you say so.
• Lemony Narrator: The unnamed narrator of the fic frequently makes snarky comments about the cast and the events surrounding them, or engages in humorous side tangents.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: Despite having never even set foot in a courtroom, Ingrid has zero difficulty defending Sylvain, even if she grumbles otherwise.
• Loophole Abuse: Byleth tries to do this to get Rhea, Seteth, and Catherine to let Ashe come along to fight Lord Lonato, by saying they just said Ashe couldn't come, not the Blue Lion House. This doesn't work, as it makes zero sense, but by the time she explains it to Catherine, it's already too late to return the students who aren't supposed to be there to the Monastery.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Like supports from the Fire Emblem series proper, the stories in Fifth Path Supports tend to focus on students other than the main four.
• Master Swordsman: Byleth is frequently acknowledged to be the best sword user in Fódlan, followed very closely by Felix.
• Mental Time Travel: The Divine Pulse only lets Byleth’s mind travel back, not her body.
• Mundane Solution: While quite a few of Byleth's solutions to past problems are maybe a bit out there, at least two of them are simple.
  • Though she sets up the crazier backup plan of blackmailing Jeritza into guarding Flayn, her main solution to preventing Flayn's kidnapping is just telling Seteth.
  • Her solution to the whole Remire Village incident is to simply request a small contingent of Knights be sent out to monitor the place.
• My Favorite Shirt:
  • Byleth gets supremely annoyed when the Demonic Beast who used to be Kostas tears a hole in her coat sleeve.
  • Balthus echoes this sentiment when Ashe uses arrows to pin him to the wall via his coat during a fight.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Or rather, "My Dad is Off Limits." Byleth gets extremely touchy when Manuela flirts with Jeralt.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: The fic has an odd relationship with this trope. Sometimes swear words will be used in dialogue, while other times it'll be covered up by narration.
• Nice Guy: Ashe is acknowledged by basically everyone to be the ultimate nice guy, and it's obvious why. He never shares any negative opinions, and is always eager to help out.
• The Nicknamer: Claude nicknames everyone he meets.
• Not a Morning Person: Byleth is really bad at waking up in the morning, requiring Sothis to throw a pillow at her usually, and is incredibly grumpy once she does get up.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: While the rest of the Best Friend Squad is paralyzed by Yuri's good looks, Dimitri's Chaste Hero status means he not only isn't distracted, but has no idea what happened and thinks Yuri cast a spell on his friends.
• One of the Kids: Though perfectly capable of being the adult in situations (usually during battle where she can't afford to goof off while her student's lives are on the line), Byleth seems much more at-home acting like what would be expected of her younger students (who are ironically usually more mature than her). The only thing keeping her from following the Sensei-chan trope is the fact that she doesn't care about marriage and even mentally dismisses the idea when Jeralt brings it up.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Fifth Path is a fantasy adventure fic about stopping a war, with Slice of Life aspects mixed in in the form of Supports. As such, it's rather jarring when the genre suddenly switches to an Ace Attorney-style courtroom drama in the "Turnabout Desserts" chapter. Sothis even lampshades it:
  Sothis: A trial? Isn’t that a bit out of genre for us?
• Painting the Medium:
  • In adding to the parody of the Ace Attorney series, "Turnabout Deserts" and "Turnabout Monster" feature said series' iconic Big Word Shout speech bubbles, along with using green text to represent Cross-Examination, just like in the series.
  • Any text from Sothis while she's inside Byleth's mind is rendered entirely in italics.
• Palm-Fist Tap: Like the generic "chin rub" Thinking Tic, several characters preform this gesture throughout the story.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: While the subject of sex is never brought up, Byleth expresses mild disgust at the idea of Jeralt and Sitri kissing in Aelfric's story about the two's first date. This is despite her being an adult, a fact she herself points out.
  Byleth: I know I’m a grown woman and the idea of my parents kissing really shouldn’t gross me out but…it grosses me out.
• Peggy Sue: The main premise of the fic is Byleth travelling back in time to prevent the original plot of Three Houses.
• Perplexing Plurals: Hilda is seemingly incapable of properly pluralizing any word ending in -is or -us. This is first brought up as a joke in the Author's Note of "Detention with Professor Byleth", about how she likely pronounces pegasi as pegasuses, and later actually shows up in "Romantic Advice" where she pluralizes the word hypothesis as hypothesises.
• Pillow Pistol: Byleth keeps a knife under her pillow, just in case. She almost decapitates Edelgard with it in Chapter 20.
• Preemptive "Shut Up": After taking verbal abuse from both Yuri and Sothis in Chapter 17, Byleth gets fed up with it and preempts Sothis before she can capitalize on one of Yuri's jabs with a bitter "Not one word."
• Prevent the War: Part of Byleth's goal in traveling back in time is to prevent the war that makes up the latter half of Three Houses' plot.
• Primal Fear: While the game already states that Hubert doesn't like heights, the fic takes this to the extreme, with Hubert being reduced to a gibbering wreck upon climbing even halfway up the Goddess Tower, something he had earlier tried to avoid via poorly-concocted excuses. Apparently, he also panicked off-screen while riding a Pegasus.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Hubert lets loose a string of nos in rapid succession upon realizing that Dedue not only plans to climb up the Goddess Tower to find Dimitri and Edelgard, but also plans to take him up there with him.
• Reaction Shot: During the flashback in Chapter 16, Sitri proposes she, Jeralt, and Aelfric call themselves the Best Friend Squad. The story then cuts back to the present where Byleth is laughing uncontrollably at the coincidence.
• Really 700 Years Old: Just like in canon, Sothis looks like a child, despite really being thousands of years old, maybe more.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: As it turns out, Sothis didn’t actually die when she merged with Byleth. Byleth gets in a shouting match with her over the fact that she didn't tell her (among other things).
• School Play: One vignette in Fifth Path Supports, aptly titled "The School Play", features the students of Garreg Mach (well, the ones we care about) putting on a school play in the form of a theatrical adaptation of "Loog and the Maiden of Wind", written by Ashe.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Byleth has, on two separate occasions, disobeyed direct orders from her superiors to do what she thinks is right.
  • She brings Ashe along to fight Lord Lonato in hopes of being able to non-lethally incapacitate him, despite Ashe having been explicitly ordered not to go.
  • She follows up on a "lead" (actually her future knowledge) she wasn't supposed to follow up on in order to defeat the Death Knight (and also to get back the Sword of the Creator without looking like a thief).
• Self-Deprecation: The author has repeatedly referred to the fic as mediocre, amateur, and occasionally just straight-up bad in the author's note. Sothis also takes a moment to point out how the time travel in the fic make no sense.
• Sentimental Drunk: Byleth gets really happy when drunk.
• Shared Family Quirks: Byleth and her late mother, Sitri, share the same Thinking Tic where they rest their right elbow on their left arm and place their palm on their left cheek.
• Share the Male Pain: When Balthus knees Yuri in the crotch, everyone present winces in sympathy, including the women.
• Shipper on Deck: Byleth quite clearly ships Sylvain and Felix to the point where when she coerces Ingrid into betting on their love life, in the vignette of Fifth Path Supports titled "Betting on Love". (It's not a bet on if they'll get together, it's a bet on who will confess first.)
• Shout-Out: The fic is full of them. Some examples:
  • Ace Attorney is referenced frequently. When characters point or slam tables, they are often referred to as doing so "like an Attorney." Additionally, chapter seven is called "Classroom Révolutionnaire", in reference to the name of Athena Cykes' objection theme, "Courtroom Révolutionnaire".
  • The biggest Ace Attorney reference is the vignette titled "Turnabout Deserts", which plays out almost exactly like a typical Ace Attorney case.
  • In Chapter 14, Claude dubs the group of himself, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Byleth as the "Best Friend Squad", a reference to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, where Bow gives the group of himself, Adora, and Glimmer the same name. Byleth even muses on how the name is "already taken".
  • Also in Chapter 14, Byleth snaps Claude and Hilda out of their Yuri-induced paralysis by claiming Hilda's head was in a bucket. A similar tactic is used by Agatha to wake Gil up in Girl Genius, though unlike Gil, Claude is more amused by the idea than interested in helping Hilda.
  • In the "Detention with Professor Byleth", the two Pegasi featured are named Scipio and Blackjack, the names of Reyna's and Percy's Pegasi, respectively, in the book series The Heroes of Olympus.
  • One chapter of Supports featuring Anna is straight-up called "A Disturbance in the Force".
  • In the same chapter, Anna has created a card game called Fire Emblem Heroes, the idea of which was apparently inspired by her meeting an "other Anna," likely referring to the Anna of that game.
  • In the Halloween Omake, Claude dresses as Fox McCloud, who his voice actor in the game, Joe Zieja, played in Star Fox Zero - The Battle Begins.
  • Also in the Halloween Omake, the alternate name Byleth comes up with for Sothis to hide her identity from Rhea is Sothe.
  • One Support is called "Linhardt Wants to Confess", named after the episode "Kaguya Wants to Confess" from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War.
  • The same support describes Linhardt as touching the back of his neck "like a Mass Effect character Going Through the Motions".
• Side Bet: The Supports chapter "Betting on Love" centers on Byleth convincing Ingrid to bet on who would confess first between Felix and Sylvain, whom she believes to have Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• The Sociopath: Metodey displays multiple traits of this, most notably his lack of empathy for others, ego, and relishing in bloodshed.
• Sorry That I'm Dying: The first thing Jeralt says to Byleth during his death scene is an apology for not being able to keep his promise of not getting himself killed.
• Take a Third Option: Subverted. Despite aiming to to prevent the war, Byleth still goes through with only choosing one of three houses (the Black Eagles) instead of, say, attempting to merge the houses together or outright refusing to choose, like you might expect.
• Tap on the Head: Downplayed. Upon being whacked on the head by a golem, Hilda actually does suffer a concussion and is taken out of the fight because of that. However, given the size of a golem, she should have suffered much worse, even just from being "grazed" as the fic describes it.
• Teasing the Substitute Teacher: Averted. When Shamir subs for Byleth, the students don't tease her at all, with the actual problem being that she's unused to their quirks.
• Tempting Fate: A particularly nasty case of this happens to the Black Eagles during their first Demonic Beast fight, courtesy of Hubert:
  Hubert:Though I loathe to admit it, it might be best that we leave this to the Knights of Seiros. Let us retreat while we can. Back over the bridge.
  [The Demonic Beast destroys the aforementioned bridge]
  Hubert: Not to worry, there is still another bridge.
  [The Demonic Beast destroys that one too]
  Dorothea: Hubie.
  Hubert: Yes?
  Dorothea: Shut up.
• Thinking Tic: A universal tic that almost all characters seems to use is rubbing their chin. Byleth has a unique tic where she rests her right elbow on her left arm and placed her palm on her left cheek, something she got from Sitri, who also does it in a flashback.
• Time Crash: The story is kicked off by Byleth accidentally freezing time for essentially every living creature, due to instinctively initiating a Divine Pulse upon seeing Dimitri and Edelgard kill each other but forgetting to specify how far back she wanted to go.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Byleth occasionally has a little trouble with distinguishing between what had happened to her in the future (which to her is the past), and the actual past—especially since her future theoretically won't happen anymore.
  Still, maybe she should have some more faith in her students. After all, they’d survived worse. Well, they would survive worse. If they survived this.
• Transformation Trinket: Crest Stones serve as a trinket that turns one into a Demonic Beast. Unfortunately, the only way to turn back is to die.
• Trick Arrow: Claude makes use of several trick arrows, including knockout gas arrows, net arrows, and even arrows that release a quick-hardening foam to capture enemies (as it turns out, they also put out fires). [Paging Oliver Queen, Mister Oliver Queen...]]
• Unexplained Accent: Lampshaded in "Flayn's Rescue". The two muggers accosting Flayn are described as having "inexplicable, very thick Italian-American accents", despite Fódlan being largely inspired by Medieval Europe, so that accent shouldn't even exist.
• Utility Magic: Magic serves often as a replacement for 21st Century technology, such as a spell that records video footage like a camera, or one that mimics a Bluetooth earpiece.
• Vague Age: It's abundantly clear that Byleth has no idea how old she is. All she can tell Seteth when he asks is that she's "adult-ish".
• Version-Exclusive Content: Yes, you read that right. The fic has three versions (as you can tell from the links in the description)—one on Fanfiction.Net, one on the Bulbagarden Forums, and one on a forum called Zelda Universe. Due to FF.Net's limitations, quite a few features (such as unique page breaks) are only shown in the Bulbagarden and Zelda Universe versions (a fact the author has repeatedly stated annoys him).
• Visible Silence: On at least two occasions a long pause is signified by the narration stating some variation of "You could almost see the ellipses hanging in the air."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Byleth and Sothis share this relationship, with both of them taking every opportunity to snipe at each other but still being friends.
• Whip Sword: The Sword of the Creator functions as both a regular sword and a whip, as expected.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Except for the beginning, end, and a small bit in the middle, Chapter 16 is entirely a flashback.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The "Turnabout Desserts" and "Turnabout Monster" vignettes are based directly on the Ace Attorney games.

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