When Ruby ran to the top of Beacon Tower, she didn't see Cinder killing her friend Pyrrha. Due to a twist of fate, she arrived just a little earlier. And when the power in her eyes activated, the three of them were sent to an entirely different world...
Light, Darkness and Paradox is a crossover between RWBY and Monster Girl Quest: Paradox, in which three characters from the former end up in the world of the latter. It is ongoing and can be found here
or here.
Light, Darkness and Paradox contains examples of:
- After the End: The world beyond the first Tartarus, in which Ilias' angels have already committed complete human and monster genocide on the residents of the surface world, except in this variation Luka quit his journey after witnessing just how outclassed he was when he saw Granberia knock out Iliasburg's guards without any real effort whatsoever, and as this is most likely a scenario of the original trilogy timeline's events without Alice tagging along with him, he returned to his village in hopes that he might improve eventually, but it was for naught as Ilias executed her genocide campaign earlier than in the original story after seeing him quit his journey early. As such, the angel's invasion was never thwarted like in the original timeline.
- Angelic Abomination: Archangel Ranael, who demonstrates that not all angels look like women with wings and halos:Her hair was a mass of hissing snakes, her left arm a bundle of slimy tentacles, her right arm a single enormous Venus flytrap, and from the waist down were the sucker-lined tentacles of an octopus.
- Character Development: Both Illias and Alice slowly get over their enmity for each other, and Illias becomes more accepting of monsters. She also realizes that she has been keeping humanity weak, making it easier for monsters to prey on them, and is horrified when she finds out what some of her alternate selves have done, ranging from wiping out monsters and all but turning humanity into pets, to having her angels wipe out all life, human and monster.
- Clock Roaches: The Apoptosis are a threat to everyone who enters the Tartarus, doing their best to kill them.
- Combat Medic: Sonya can both heal her allies and club her enemies (using the same staff for both, in fact).
- Cute Monster Girl: It is a Monster Girl Quest crossover, after all. The most prominent monsters are Alice (outwardly a Lamia, though her exact biology is more complicated) and Lime (a Slime Girl).
- Later on, Cinder, Ruby, and Pyrrha become monster girls. Cinder becomes a yoma, Ruby becomes a cyborg, and Pyrrha becomes a dragonkin.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Both Alice and Ilias have lost most of their power and their previous subordinates, and have been shrunken into the forms of little girls. This forces them both to find new allies.
- Dramatic Irony: The use of multiple perspectives has this effect. For example, the reader knows that Pyrrha is alive from the sections written from her perspective, but other characters believe her to be dead.
- Eldritch Location: The Tartarus, being tunnels through space-time between different worlds with bizarre geography and patrolled by the grotesque and hostile Apoptosis.
- Emergency Transformation: King Peter became a cyborg to save his life after barely surviving an assassination attempt.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Ilias hates monsters, though she's forced to be more accepting of them due to her current weakened state.
- Alice, in turn, hates Ilias and her angels.
- Headbutting Heroes: Alice and Ilias refuse to be in the same group together, except when investigating the Tartarus. Even then, they still get into arguments. This is carried over from the source material, in which they're Mutually Exclusive Party Members. Both eventually get over it.
- How Do I Shot Web?: After the first time she uses her silver eyes, Ruby is unable to do so again despite her efforts.
- Magitek: Ruby eventually learns how to make magical ammunition; a necessity after she runs out of Dust ammunition and can't get any Dust to make more.
- Nephilim: Luka is a half-angel, as in the source material.
- Loophole Abuse: During their fight against Izanami, they very nearly get killed, but Chrome's last-minute idea saves their lives by utilizing the "Dead Is Dead" concoction that works perfectly to eliminate the otherwise-invincible undead-comprised Izanami that they face at their current level of power that actually works the same way in the original source material as well.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Ruby is just a huntress-in-training in her original world, but when she arrives in the Paradox world, most of the people around her are notably weaker than her. An exception is the Queen Harpy Lucretia, who effortlessly defeats Ruby and her friends.
- This fades away as the story goes on, with most high-ranking monsters making quick work of the party, even Pyrrha.
- One-Gender Race: Monsters and angels are this.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: King Peter of San Ilia is one, caring deeply about his people, working to mend the distrust between humans and monsters despite leading one of the most fanatically devout nations in the world, showing mercy to the monster test subjects in the lab, and abhoring the practices of the Luddite Village, having sent agents to spy on them and planning on sending soldiers to retake it after finding out just how horrible things are there.
- Sinister Scythe: Both Ruby and Nero wield enormous scythes as weapons. Ruby's is named Crescent Rose and also functions as a sniper rifle, while the latter's looks so impractical (it has a handle on the inner edge of the blade) that it shocks Ruby when she first sees it. Reaper is no slouch either as her scythe puts both Ruby's and Nero's to shame in comparison due to her incalculable power.
- Super-Speed:
- Ruby has this power, especially when she activates her Semblance.
- Harpies have it as well, with even average harpies shown to be capable of keeping up with Ruby.
- Switching P.O.V.: Ruby is the main POV character, but there have also been sections from the POV of Pyrrha, Cinder, Jaune and Glynda.
- The Dreaded: Adramelech. Unfortunately for Ruby and friends, they fail to realize that even if they defeat her, she usually-always merely revives later and stronger than before, not to mention that each time it can stack whenever she's defeated, meaning her power can be made limitless if brought back enough times... Ruby and friends are better left running than simply increasing the abomination's power. Not to mention that she's more than capable of erasing entire universes as shown in the alternate, near-dead world with the Administrator's Tower. The only thing preventing her from destroying all existence is the fact that she has a top-priority order to preserve any universes that match the original MGQ Timeline... and dispose of those that don't into Apoptosis. Nothingness.
- Was Once a Man: The Apoptosis turn out to be this, being transformed into twisted abominations to serve as guardians of the space-time continuum.
- Wham Episode:
- Chapter 34: With Lilith's help, Cinder transforms herself into a yoma, and her final thoughts in the chapter make it clear that, despite their agreement that Lilith wouldn't brainwash her, Cinder is now under Lilith's control.
- Chapter 38: After nearly being killed by Cinder again, Ruby and Pyrrha decide to change their bodies to increase their power. Ruby chooses to become a Cyborg, while Pyrrha undergoes monsterization to become a Dragonkin.
- Chapter 39: White Rabbit shows up on Remnant to tell the people at Beacon to stop their portal experiments, telling them that they are damaging the fabric of the universe. She then sends Jaune, Ren, Nora, Yang, and Weiss to the other world.
- Chapter 40: Yang and Nora reunite with Ruby and Pyrrha.
- Chapter 41: While fleeing from a powerful Apoptosis on a world that has nearly been destroyed, Frederika and Micaela are killed buying time for the others. The rest of the party ends up scattered across time and space, and the Apoptosis is only stopped when Marcellus appears and saves Ruby and Luka.
- Chapter 46: The group find Jaune and Ren.
- Chapter 56: Grangold is freed from the control of Monster World Tamamo and Cinder is killed.
- Chapter 57: Alice XV declares a war of genocide against humanity
- Chapter 58: Angel World Ilias is attempting to clone pre-yoma Cinder using DNA samples found from before she transformed... and she accidentally brought Grimm essence into her world, which is now loose with nobody knowing about it.
