Fanfic / Through Her Eyes

Some eyes are quite special indeed ^note  Current Story Cover created by TheDragonsBlaze(Deviantart)

"Young lady, have you ever considered the importance of your eyes?"

Through Her Eyes (SpaceBattles link) is a RWBY Fan Fic by Peroth. The story focuses on an alternate version of Ruby Rose who, rather than her traditional Semblance and the powers of the Silver-Eyed Warriors, instead possesses a Semblance to summon the Creatures of Grimm, and a pair of eyes all too familiar to Ozpin and his inner circle, that inflict anyone who sees them with crippling fear.

Forced to spend her childhood hidden from the world, and to wear goggles that hide her eyes and her secret, Ruby is still just as determined to be a Huntress, despite the opportunity of attending a Huntsmen Academy being seemingly closed to her. Things change for her when Professor Ozpin offers her a place at Beacon Academy, in spite of the risks of anyone finding out about her powers or, worse, her losing control of them all together. He only has two conditions: no one can find out about Ruby's abilities, and she must learn to control them so they don't get out of hand.

The first volume was completed on May 12th, 2018, at 426,000 words, with the author expressing plans for more in the future. A "remastered" version that condenses, rewrites, and expands much of this volume has also been started, and can be found here: Through Her Eyes: Remastered

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This Story Provides Examples Of:

• Absurd Phobia: We don't see it, but Ren mentions things that horses are one of the few things that make him lose his cool. One can only wonder why.
• Adaptational Early Appearance The story covers most of the events of Volume One of the original show, but imply they happen much sooner (A week originally, a month in the Remaster). Despite this change, Penny and Sun still manage to make an appearance for the final arc.
  • Taiyang, Qrow, Ironwood, Emerald, Mercury, Neo, Coco, Fox and Yatsuhashi all also manage to get some time on page despite not showing up until Volume Two or later.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Downplayed. In the original fic, Weiss threatens to kill Ruby or leave her to die because she doesn't want to be partners with her. The rewrite only has Weiss scream that she hates Ruby and would rather die than accept her help.
  • Downplayed, again with White Fang as a whole. On one hand, they're still presented as an antagonistic terrorist group, as they were in canon. Blake often recalls the horrible things they had done. On the other hand, the story presents a much nicer part of White Fang. They exposed corruption, defilement, and exploitation, they actually got high-class lawyers to help them sue the people taking advantage of them. Velvet is one of the people they helped. It's thanks to them she could eat proper meals. It's often discussed if White Fang is really evil, and if they are, if it isn't understandable, why turned violent. All in all the Faunus group is much more complex than in canon.
    • In Vale's chapter, at one point, Blake created a Cherry Initiative, which consisted of giving free books to children, despite Adam's insistence that it was a pointless waste of resources.
    • After Yang saved a random Faunus from racist thugs, a member of the Fang called their medical division to get him checked, even if he was just a pamphlet distributor. He was nice enough to buy them dinner. Which he used as an opportunity to poison Weiss...
• Adaptational Superpower Change: The premise of this fic, where Ruby can summon Grimm.
• Amazonian Beauty: All over the place! Even Ruby has a solid muscle definition, her father and Uncle made sure of it. They attent the Huntsman Academy, after all. Pyhrra, Yang and Nora compete over the first place.
• Apologetic Attacker: Pyrrha actually apologizes for Yang's beatdown of the White Fang goons she goes through looking for Ruby.
• Armor-Piercing Question: During initiation, Weiss tries to give Ruby a speech on self-reliance, and as upset as Ruby gets over it, she also recognizes what it meant for Weiss' upbringing. Weiss doesn't react that well to Ruby's observation.
  Ruby: "You... don't get many hugs, do you?"
• Ascended Extra: Professor Peach. She was only mentioned once in canon. Here she has an equal amount of screentime as the rest of Beacon Staff. She's quite a colorful character.
• Assimilation Backfire: Psycho for Hire Edward Almost has some-kind of Aura-absorption semblance. He tries to use this on Weiss when she's using her Fire Shroud, and winds up burning himself almost to death when he doesn't get the Required Secondary Powers needed to not burn, and only Yang stomping on him saves his life by extinguishing the flames.
• Awesome, but Impractical: People used to strengthen their clothes through Aura, but it was dropped quickly because of how Aura naturally works. On the other hand, it's great for ironing clothes.
• Bad Powers, Good People: More or less the premise of the fic. Despite Ruby's abilities, she's still the same heroic and brave person as canon, and the very reason she's at Beacon is because Ozpin desperately hopes she can remain that way to become a force for good.
• Berate and Switch: After initiation, the Beacon professors review RWBY and JNPR's performance. They immediately berate all the mistakes they made. When Ozpin asks if they'll let the students in, they declare they passed with flying colors.
• The Berserker: Ruby goes into this state in the original Chapter 16 when she loses control, and becomes completely focused on killing Roman. The other characters note she's fighting with none of her usual skill, just raw ferocity, and yet she fights Sun, Penny, Weiss, Yang and all of JNPR to a standstill.
• Big Damn Heroes: Yang and Weiss arrive in time to help Blake, Sun, and Penny against the White Fang Anti-Hunters, and JNPR arrives not much later to help.
• Big Sister Instinct: Yang will do anything to protect Ruby. This borders on smothering as she refuses to let anyone, even her partner Blake, date her (Though considering not just her chastity but her semblances dark nature this is to be expected).
• Black Eyes of Evil: Overlaps with Red Eyes, Take Warning and Tainted Veins; All of the above apply to Ruby's eyes, as they're essentially the same eyes that Salem has. They always appear to be glaring and radiating hate towards everyone in the environment, regardless of whatever emotion Ruby may actually be feeling at the time or if she's even looking at you.
• Blood Knight: Pyrrha is disturbed to realize she has a bit of this after she realizes how much she's enjoying fighting the berserk-state Ruby.
• Book Dumb: Averted. Despite her own beliefs on the matter, Ruby is actually one of the most intelligent students at Beacon, second only to Weiss. That said, her past education of homeschooling and internet tutorial videos means there's a lot of blind spots in her knowledge base, such as technology, so she has to do a fair amount of catch-up work in order to stay at Beacon. Either way, her real strength is in her fighting ability, which amazes the rest of her class.
• Brick Joke: Blake debunks the story of Yang defeating an Ursa with a random pop stick since it takes time to bond with a weapon. Chapters later she defeats a few White Fangs with a random wood splinter. She's aware of the irony.
• Can't Catch Up: Weiss is the physically weakest member of Team RWBY without Aura, due in part to her lack of practical experience compared to the others, and is a bit annoyed by that fact. She even engages in sessions with Ruby, practicing on her summoned Grimm, in order to train and improve, though she's still got a long way to go.
• Cast Full of Gay: Almost every major Beacon student (and one major villain) has been shown flirting with or, at the very least, secretly eyeing up characters of the same gender. Yang, a strong lesbian flirt, has even memorized a statistic saying this about Huntresses, stating that 74.3% of the polled Huntresses had positive same-sex relationships with fellow huntresses, over 90% having had a prior sexual relationship with a huntress, and just under 40% have had or were currently in a long term lesbian relationship with a huntress. She’s shut down before she can reveal the ‘’boys’s’’ numbers. In the remastered version and with hints in the original one, Ruby and Blake are attracted to each other.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Despite the raging battle around them, Sun takes the time to conversationally tell Weiss about his opinions on her music. Weiss lampshades how idiotic it is to be talking mid-battle, but it doesn't really stop him.
• Cement Shoes: Roman mentions dropping a sex trafficker off a pier this way.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Ruby gets rather clingy when Yang tries to hit on Weiss. When Blake suggests that Yang and Weiss are more or less on a date on their outing to get wings, she is not happy.
• Closet Key: In the Remastered version, while Ruby has a couple of moments where she finds women attractive, she only consciously puts it together when she meets Blake for the first time.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Yang and her father's mutual underhandedness in a spar is noted by a watching Pyrrha.
  • Ruby is not above kicking her opponents into the groin if the situation presents itself.
  • Neither is Pyhrra. She doesn't usually use dirty tricks like using Ruby as a shield against Yang, because she's good enough to win without them. She will use them if that's what she needs to win.
• Comfort Food: Team RWBY's are discussed early on. Yang's preference is chocolate chip ice-cream and pretzels, Ruby's is, rather unsurprisingly, cookie dough, Weiss, rather surprisingly, likes hot wings, and Blake's preference is fish.
• Cooldown Hug: Zaizaged. Just after the assination attempt on Wiess, Yang hugs her, but not to calm the heiress but to keep herself from lashing out.
  Weiss: Y-Yang?
  Yang: I want to kill so many things. But I can't so I'm hugging you until you're okay so don't complain.
  Weiss: I'm not.
• Cool Teacher: Every teacher at beacon qualifies:
  • Port bores his students to death, however, his harsh but honest rush Weiss' character development. He also brings living Grimm for his lessons for his students to fight.
  • While Obleck doesn't hide his anger towards Team RWBY and JNPR for destroying ancient ruins, it doesn't stop him from understanding some of his students lack behind in class and advising them how to catch up.
  • Peach might be the nicest of them all. She gives Ruby a private lesson on how to mix dust and assures her that Weiss won't hate her for making a mistake. She later acts towards her like a carrying mother after going berserk
  • Glynda is more of the Stern Teacher kind. She's more standoffish and professional than her co-workers, but she genuinely wishes the best for her students. She's quick to voice her objections to accepting Ruby at Beacon but she was quick to oppose the plan to imprison Ruby, showing that she does care about her.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Ruby's Grimm summoning, of course.
• Covert Pervert:
  • While Yang is rather open about finding women attractive, and Nora is rather uninhibited in general, several other characters have more low-key moments of perversion.
  • Ruby is shown physically attracted mostly to Blake, though her feelings are described by the latter as a more pure first crush.
  • Ruby has openly wondered if how good one's butt looks in the Beacon gym uniform has any influence on leader skills, and invited the other members of the team and team JNPR to look at hers. She also appreciates Sun's abs, and even when she's trying to arrest him, instinctively takes a look when her actions make said abs flex, and checks out his butt when he digs into his back pockets for his wallet.
  • Weiss can't stop staring at Blake's chest when the latter borrows one of her dresses for a dinner, as her cup size being larger than Weiss's means that her "goods" are well-defined.
  • Blake doesn't mind Yang's attention quite as much as she lets on. She's also snuck looks at the other team members, and admire's Taiyang's physique, and takes a peek at Sun's butt along with Ruby. In the remastered version she is interested in Ruby physically, even eyeing her butt as well.
  • When Ruby is wondering how her butt looks in her gym uniform, Ren sneaks a look while Nora is distracted. He's also rather distracted by Jaune's manscaping job. Nora's also let slip that her and Ren's relationship is sexual in this universe...
  • Pyrrha apparently has a mild fetish toward lips, and when Jaune is applying some makeup her to her face, she blurts out that she wants him to "do" her, and is a bit torn when it flies over his head.
• Cuteness Proximity: The usual response to Zwei. Ruby befriending Penny starts when the latter sees the corgi in the street and asks to take some pictures of him. She also has an active livecam of kittens and puppies from a local shelter in her head and finds the need to turn it off almost as dire as Ruby's kidnapping.
• Did Not Think This Through: This happens twice in Volume 1.
  • Torchwick lampshades that capturing Blake and taking her away might not be the best idea considering the fact that it might cause Ozpin to take action.
  • Torchwick apparently did not consider the best methods of transporting Ruby since the conditions he put her through caused her powers to begin activating on their own at the end of that chapter.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Pyrrha's opinion of combat scythes, with most warriors using them as a supplement, and not very skillfully from her experience in the arena, but, as Ruby shows, they are quite dangerous in the hands of someone genuinely skilled with them.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When Nora accuses Ren of ogling Yang, he tells her that he doesn't want to throw beautiful blondes onto his bed for any reason, being quite happy with her. The thing she latches onto is him calling Yang "beautiful".
• Domestic Abuser: Cardin was Yang's ex-boyfriend, and they dated for two weeks. She ended things with him after his dog nearly hurt Ruby, causing her to lose control of her powers when defending herself and kill the animal.
• The Dreaded: The thing Cinder claims Salem will send to Vale if she finds out about Ruby's powers has even her terrified. It's the reason she runs Roman ragged trying to find her as soon as possible.
• Door Stopper: The first volume completed at 426,000 words, with the group still in their first week at Beacon. The "remastered" version of that volume, despite condensing some earlier moments, expands others and adds so many additional scenes and chapters that it becomes even more of an example.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Oh, so much. Almost every chapter has at least a few instances of Team RWBY and/or Team JNPR commenting on how attractive their teammates and friends are. With Yang being the biggest example of them all.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Blake ultimately deduces that Ruby is hiding her eyes not because of an eye condition... but because she's secretly a Faunus. As anyone reading the story can tell, it's not the case.
• Ethical Slut: Yang is rather proud of her exploits, but won't try anything serious with a girl who is straight and/or in a committed relationship like Pyrrha and Nora, will take it more slowly if her "target" is new to dating, and broke up with the Malachite twins when they revealed they had done a Twin Switch to both get in her pants when she thought that she was just seeing one of them, finding their hopes of a Twin Threesome Fantasy creepy. She also does plan on finding a "Miss Right" eventually, after she's had her fun.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Roman and Neo. He treats her like a teenaged daughter and apparently killed his old crime boss because he planned on raping her. It's the thought of never seeing her again that lets Roman fight back against Ruby despite the effects her eyes are having on him.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Roman mentions early on that he doesn't do stuff like human trafficking, dropped a sex trafficker off a pier, implies that they've killed serial killers, and as mentioned above apparently killed his old boss because he planned on sexually assaulting Neo.
  • Even the other White Fang members don't like Edward Almost.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Most of Volume One originally took place over a single week. The remastered version adds a few more events and has the story take place over the course of a more believable month instead.
• Fantastic Racism: Faunus and Humans just like in canon. The author goes on to show the reasons and how people react to it.
  • There's an Anti-terrorist Unit which unfortunately often boils to pacifying faunus groups. Some of them carried weapons but it's unclear if they were for protection against Grimm or something more nefarious.
    • The situation muddies the fact that there were occurrences of ear-taking as a form of creepy trophies. Weiss is obviously disgusted.
  • Both Ruby and Yang note that Patch has a concentration of Anti-faunus attitudes. As Yang says it plenty of jerks back at home.
    • On the other hand, she also recalls when she was invited to a birthday party from one of the faunus families (there are about ten of them, apparently) and the dad of the kid thought she was there to spy on them.
  • One of the elder students had set up a stand promoting a support group for other faunus students, called Youth of the White Fang. She makes a point that they do not condone Vale White Fangs chapter's actions.
    • Still, one of those students says he doesn't care, because his relative died in Fangs' raid. Marina can't help but feel sympathetic and even admits she used to imagine humans as monsters going their way to get them. Her stay at Beacon helped her grow out of it, but apparently, such an attitude is normal in her home village.
    • She sometimes gets harassed by other students but rarely by groups, because it would catch Ozpin's attention.
  • During their trip to Vale, Yang and Weiss happened to see a bunch of thugs harassing a faunus leafleteer. Weiss wanted to call the police but Yand just went and beat them up. Weiss later chastises herself for doing nothing.
• Fighting a Shadow: It's noted that the Grimm Ruby summons seem to merge back into the pool beneath rather than turning into ash and vanishing like they normally do, giving this impression, and potentially resulting in her supply being effectively limitless.
• Fights Like a Normal: Ruby prefers not to use her Semblance whenever possible, but still turns out pretty badass.
• Fingore: At one point, Jaune accidentally severs two fingers from a White Fang member he'd tried to disarm. Jaune actually feels incredibly guilty, since said member was just a kid younger even then him, and clearly scared out of his mind.
  • A background conversation in the Beacon cafeteria mentions someone who lost a ring finger on a hunt with their father.
• Fish People: Marina has gills on her neck. She seems to be perfectly fine living inland, though she does wet her gills with a wet cloth.
• Forced to Watch: Narrowly averted, but after Roman spectacularly screws up, Cinder plans to first kill Neo in front of him before killing Roman himself. Fortunately Salem convinces her she still needs them to pull off her plan to bring down Beacon.
• Friendless Background: Ruby was homeschooled due to a childhood incident that caused other children to mercilessly attack her because of her eyes, with her family additionally forbidding others from coming close to their home in case young Ruby ended up losing control.
• The Gadfly: Blake takes great pleasure in ruffling teammates' feathers. Her favorite victims are Weiss and Yang. She never takes it further than slightly teasing them, though, and she's not as open and aggressive as her partner, but she admits frustrating them fills her with energy.
• Gag Penis: In the Remastered version, Nora makes a passing comment that Jaune is lucky he's both cute and hung, much to Jaune's embarrassment as he thinks Ren told Nora. Then later in the same chapter when Weiss is being teased by her team and threatens to have them hung, Nora shows up and jokingly asks if they were talking about Jaune, causing them to laugh at Jaune's expense.
• Genki Girl: Nora, naturally. So much that when Ren hears about Ruby's trouble on the first day at Beacon, his reaction is to call Nora to cheer her up. Ruby describes her as a walking smile that vibrates in joy and makes Yang look calm and down to earth.
• Gilded Cage: When you get down to it, this is ultimately what Ironwood's suggestion for what to do with Ruby amounts to; using her powers to help Grimm researchers in a secure Atlas facility that would be equipped with measures to deal with her if she ever loses control. Taiyang and the school staff point out that his plan is exactly this trope, but admit that if Ruby becomes a danger, that moving her to such a place would be the best option. For her part, Ruby considers it a Fate Worse than Death.
• Godzilla Threshold: Ruby really hates using her powers, unless it's a life-or-death situation. Between the Power Incontinence, and the things she's summoning, can you really blame her?
• Green-Eyed Monster: In the remastered version, Ruby reveals that she's jealous of how Yang not only gets to remember their mother but doesn't have to deal with all the issues her eyes have caused her.
• Groin Attack: During the obstacle course, Zwei leaps out of the water and chomps down on Ren's crotch. He's fine due to Aura, but he is forced to drop out to get Zwei to stop.
• Handicapped Badass: Fox was born blind, but became a Hunter student despite that.
• Hassle-Free Hotwire: Blake was so freaked out by Ruby's eyes that she actually managed to hotwire a car and flee Beacon before she managed to snap out of her blind panic. To be fair, she has had experience with hotwiring vehicles before.
• Head Desk: Blake while talking to Sun, letting her angst over what happened with Ruby get ahold of her.
• Heel–Face Turn: Weiss was more antagonistic towards Ruby than in canon, but she changes her ways following Ruby saving her life.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Everyone knows that Weiss can sing, but not everyone knows she owns a guitar - called Lucille - and she's quite good at playing it. She also shows very high expectations from herself.
  • Weiss is impressed with Blake's drawing skills.
• Hot Teacher: What the female students (including Blake) think of Beacon's new P.E. teacher: Taiyang.
• Humanoid Abomination: According to Cinder, if Salem discovers that someone like Ruby is in Vale, and Cinder hasn't already caught her, she'll send...something to Vale to do the job. Something that looks human but isn't and would gladly kill everything in the city if Salem gives it the go-ahead. Even Cinder is terrified of this thing.
• Hypocrite: Blake, repeatedly and despite her best efforts. She keeps making snap judgements of people based on first impressions, expecting other people to respect beliefs she has and they may not and generally struggles to be open minded, honest and sincere in most of her dealings with people. All while demanding these from pretty much everyone she meets. To her credit, she does often notice her hypocrisy later and tries to correct the mistake.
• I Am a Monster: Ruby thinks her powers make her this. Weiss never hesitates to slap her back to reason whenever she vocalizes the notion.
  • Hurting Yang horrifies her so much that she delves fully into this mindset.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Variation. Qrow promises Ozpin that if Ruby or Yang get hurt on his watch, Salem will be the least of his problems.
• Insane Troll Logic: Somehow, Ruby concludes that the better ass the person has, the better Team Leader they are. She uses Jaune as an example. Blake obviously finds that logic ridiculous... but she later admits that Sun is good at being a team leader... besides having a nice ass.
• Interrupted Cooldown Hug: In Volume One, when Yang has nearly calmed down an out-of-control-Ruby, Roman idiotically tries to stab Ruby in the neck, injuring Yang in the process, and making Ruby even more out of control than before.
• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Jaune makes a comment that implies that he is dyslexic, but is able to read passably as long as he takes it slow.
• I Owe You My Life: Weiss tells Ruby this on multiple occasions, much to the latter's discomfort, who doesn't want her first friendship to be based on some life debt.
• Lap Pillow: Taiyang rests Weiss's head on his lap after she's exhausted by an "outside of class" exercise, Pyrrha getting jealous that she isn't getting that from Jaune, even dropping the trope name. Then Ruby lays her head on Weiss's lap, with Yang leaning against her thighs.
• Last Het Romance: Cardin was Yang's last boyfriend, it's even hinted that at least some of why she focuses so exclusively on women despite still seeming to find guys attractive was, at least at first, a way to spite him for siccing his dog on Ruby.
• Leg Focus:
  • According to Yang in the Remastered version, Ruby is "almost all leg" with pale skin that make her glow under artificial lighting. And both Blake and Yang note she has a remarkable bottom, something which Blake gets drawn to along with her legs in the changing rooms, and which Yang bemoans since it has ruined yoga pants for her.
  • Blake herself has a lot of focus brought her legs and butt, with Ruby being distracted by former during her first meeting. And Ruby, Yang, and Weiss are utterly transfixed by her legs and her "Majesty", as Weiss puts it, in the changing rooms.
  Yang: "You know exactly who I'm talking about: little miss perfect butt on perfect legs with perfect hair and that stone-cold glare that just says mrrroawr.
• Lightning Bruiser: Blake is impressed by Yang's general speed and rapidness of her punches. She also notes that her hits are never random but deliberately chosen. While Yang might look act like a brute at times, she's very skilled.
• Little Miss Badass: If she's not lying, Yang managed to kill Ursa Minor when she was twelve. With a whittled popsicle stick.
• Lobotomy: Jaune accidentally did it to Deathstalker, causing it to become disorganized and barely a threat to anyone.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • By the time initiation is over, Blake is the only member of Team RWBY who doesn't know about Ruby's abilities, with Yang having grown up with Ruby, and Weiss having been saved by Ruby's powers during initiation. She quickly figures out that Ruby's secret has to be something more grand than a simple eyesight issue, however^note with Ruby herself inadvertently making it clear to her, Team JNPR, and Team CFVY that it obviously isn't during the dinner party in the remastered version. She latches onto the idea that Ruby might be a Faunus hiding distinctive eyes in the original version, but admits to herself that such a reveal is only hopeful thinking that doesn't explain even half the stuff she's noticed. She eventually gets fed up about being kept in the dark and rips off Ruby's goggles in a fit of rage, ranting about how they should trust her... only for her to have the exact reaction to Ruby's eyes they've been worried about.
  • It's also all but stated that Ozpin knows a good deal more about Ruby's abilities than he lets on, and he has every intention of keeping it that way, especially from Ruby herself.
  Expectations turned kittens into tigers, and he absolutely did not need Miss Rose to know what she was.
• Loveable Sex Maniac: Yang is proud of this and her exploits.
• Magic Feather: When Jaune is nervous about taking a test, Ruby gives him a red pencil she claims is lucky to boost his confidence. Jaune, having grown up on a farm full of superstitious people, doesn't believe it for a second (even if he doesn't let it on to Ruby), but appreciates the thought, especially since his entire tenure had been because of luck, and it seems to help calm down and focus, allowing him to pass.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Marina is a fish faunus.
  Marina: Marna, by the way. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a real zinger of a name.
  Yang: If it makes you feel better, Yang means Sun.
  Marina: Apt.
  Yang: Yup.
  • In the final chapter of the first volume, we find out that Ruby is a "Niggurath." As in Shub-Niggurath, Mother-Of-A-Thousand-Young.
• Modest Royalty: Coco turns out to be the princess of Vale in this universe, though the royal family doesn't seem to still have much if any, real political power in the present, and Coco doesn't like to make that big a deal out of it, though she was a bit brattier when she was younger before Ozpin helped set her straight and get her on the path to being a Huntress. Despite this, she's still had to deal with people trying to get close to her for her status, who she deals with by acting like a jerk to see how people will react.
• Mundane Utility: Aura can be used to iron clothes. Ren uses it frequently.
  • Yang's fire hair used a torch.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After the panic from seeing Ruby's eyes fades, Blake is horrified and disgusted with herself for pulling Ruby's goggles off, both because she potentially hurt her physically by pulling her hair, and because she violated Ruby's trust.
  • Ruby is horrified when she hurts Yang in a rage at her sister interfering with her rampage against Roman.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Played with humorously in regards to Yang not wanting Ruby to date anyone to maintain her innocence.
  • They're not sisters, but Yang hitting on Weiss garners a similar reaction from Ruby.
• Nervous Wreck: She never openly shows it, but Blake lives in the constant state of worry that people will find out her ears or her old friends from White Fang will find her in Vale. A big part of her arc is to learn to trust her new friends.
• Not Hyperbole: When Weiss makes a comment about not knowing what to expect during Tai's obstacle course, Blake makes a comment about a dog with a shark fin going for a swim. Weiss is about to chew her out for being irreverant before seeing Zwei do just that.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Qrow claims that he only work with Ozpin to keep his family safe from Salem, not the world at large. Everything else he saves is "just collateral." Ozpin doesn't seem to believe him, but doesn't call him on it either.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Ruby considers Torchwick as rather similar to the Grimm, a monster who lives to hurt people without remorse. After hurting Yang when she gets in the way of her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, she even compares herself to a monster.
• Offhand Backhand: Ruby's training from Qrow means that she sometimes dispatches Grimm before she even consciously realizes that they're present. For example, when fighting a Boarbatusk in Port's class, Ruby dispatches it in seconds while distracted thinking of another matter.
• Official Couple: Unlike the show, Ren and Nora were a couple even before Beacon's initiation. They are sickeningly sweet to each other at times.
• Oh, Crap!: Weiss and Yang's reaction when they realize that Ruby has finally lost control of her powers.
• One-Man Army: Hunters, even just teenaged students, are all leagues above average citizens thanks to the effects of Aura. Lampshaded when a White Fang leader laments that there are only six dozen men on his side, against three teenage Hunters.
  "Three Hunters?"
  "Yeah, young ones too."
  "There's only six dozen of us! What are we gonna do against three Hunters?"
  "They're young, the hell can they do?"
  "Young, old, doesn't matter you idiot, they have personal shields, twice our strength, and have super powers!
  • Ruby, when she loses control.
• Papa Wolf: Taiyang, of course. Apparently, one of Yang's teachers once tried something inappropriate with her ("after-class tutoring") and ended up with four broken ribs at his hands. When Ruby asks Jaune to comment on her butt, she has to tell her dad off from throttling her classmate.
• Partial Transformation: In the remastered version, Ruby demonstrates doing this with Grimm parts, summoning a Beowulf skull/head to protect her from a shot from Roman, or claws over her hand to attack him with.
• Power Incontinence: Ruby has this in spades. While her Semblance can let her do a few other Grimm-related things, her main skill is the ability to summon any Grimm she wants. The catch? She can't control them at all, making them prone to attack even her as soon as they show up. On the rare times that she does use this, she usually limits it just to their limbs; specifically arms for grabbing or blocking, and wings for flying. Part of the reason Ozpin lets her attend Beacon is that he hopes he and the other teachers can help her learn to control it.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Roman. For example, when the White Fang captures Blake, he is pissed, pointing out that they've jeopardized the operation and potentially put Ozpin on their tails.
• Precision F-Strike: Blake doesn't curse very much, except in truly stressful situations. She proves to have a very rich vocabulary.
• Primal Stance: Ruby when she sees Roman again after breaking out of her cage in the Remastered version.
• Psychoactive Powers: Ruby's control of her summoning is tied to some degree to her emotions.
• Psycho for Hire: The White Fang hires chainsaw wielding Edward Almost, who has a body count in the dozens. Even other White Fang members think he's sick.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Oobleck let's one out when he sees that the future Team RWBY accidentally blew up the Emerald Forest ruins in their initiation.
  Oobleck: No...No no nonononono! Bad! Very bad girls! VERY VERY BAD!
• Reluctant Warrior: Ruby will fight humans if she really needs to, but she is much more comfortable fighting Grimm, to the point that her performance drastically suffers during a spar with Yang against Pyrrha and Ren.
• Revenge Before Reason: In the remake, Ruby becomes so obsessed with killing Roman for what he did to her and Blake that she even fights Yang when she tries to stop her.
• Rousing Speech: Penny... attempts to give Ruby one of these during the search for Blake. It works, but not in the way she intended.
  Penny: Ruby. One must remember that the darkest night heralds the brighter dawn. Actions speak louder than words so we must act rather than talk! Don't get your panties in a twist just think this through! Tomorrow is a new day, so keep your chin up champ!
  Beat
  Ruby: (bursts out laughing)
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: As a result of Ruby's homeschooling, while her father and Qrow have made her a skilled combatant, she's a bit short on some other subjects, and doesn't even know how the digital keyboards in the classrooms at Beacon work.
• Secret-Keeper: Ruby's family, naturally, along with Ozpin and Goodwitch serve as this for Ruby's powers at the beginning of the story. The other Beacon teachers are made aware of her Semblance after her enrollment. Weiss becomes aware when Ruby uses her abilities to save her a second time during initiation and quickly decides to keep it secret as well.
  • By the end of volume one, Blake, Team JNPR, Sun, and Penny are all in on the secret as well.
• Secret Test of Character: Coco talks smack to Ruby in front of Yang to make sure that they cared more about each other than sucking up to her due to her status, having had trouble with those kinds of people before.
• Shout-Out: In one chapter, Ruby talks about some legendary Huntsmen and their Mentors, including Simba and his teacher Rafiki, and Seras who learned under the terrifying Vladimir.
  • The remastered story has Taiyang mention "some kid who could turn his body into rubber and another kid with red eyes and an insane amount of Semblance powers" when Yang asks about past students who got into Beacon early.
  • The dinner that Teams RWBY and JNPR have with Team CFVY in the remastered version is catered by Chef Lumiere and Cogsworth.
  • Yang says that even the Tarrasque couldn't keep her from finding Ruby after her kidnapping.
• Shrinking Violet: Ruby, big time, due to the circumstances regarding her upbringing.
• Sinister Scythe: Crescent Rose, naturally. However, Ruby's powers also let pull a black scythe from the portals she uses to summon Grimm, described in-story as seeming not to reflect light at all.
  • One chapter also does some Worldbuilding on why scythes have a reputation as sinister on Remnant. The fighting style that accompanies the weapon itself utilizes odd angles and unusual attacks make them both very hard to defend against and equally hard to master, making for a very intimidating weapon in the right hands. The intimidation factor is only helped by the tendency for them to have been the weapon of choice of many of the more... unheroic Huntsman over the years.
• Skilled, but Naive:
  • Weiss is this, as in canon, having never really faced any actual Grimm before.
  • Ruby is also this, as Pyrrha notes at one point. She's legitimately skilled with Crescent Rose, especially when fighting Grimm, but she tends to hesitate before attacking too much when sparring, focuses on defending her teammates to the point that she leaves herself vulnerable, and sometimes is less than fully aware of the positioning of nearby walls. Later, she assumes that someone trying to sell her and Blake drugs was attempting to sell them Ice Dust, and didn't realize it until Blake said that she was reasonably certain that he was a drug dealer.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Ruby has it even worse than canon (which is saying something) due to her Friendless Back Ground, constantly stuttering when speaking and apologizing at the drop of a hat.
• Something Only They Would Say: Remembering that Yang's memorizes a statistic on how many Huntresses are lesbians, Pyrrha uses it to determine if the Yang that she hears on the ship is an imposter or not.
• Special Effect Failure: In-Universe, the Sinister Scythe Ruby can summon with her powers doesn't seem to reflect light at all, and is described as looking like rather sloppy special effects, possibly a jab to the background figures in canon before things picked up.
• Spider People: Jinqo, White Fang's trap expert. She has a set of chitinous spider limbs right under her human arms which she uses to spin special sticky, spider-like strings. She can't create the webs directly, however, and has to use a special box and chemicals to do so.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When talking to Blake after she fled Beacon due to seeing Ruby's eyes, Sun points out that she could have told Ruby the truth about her being a Faunus, trading secrets and working up to getting Ruby willing to reveal the truth, and Blake tells him to shut up.
• Stealth Expert: Blake's specialty.
  Blake: I've trained all my life for this sorta stuff; recon, identification, incapacitation? That's what I'm good at.
  • Jinqo is the best trapper in the White Fang and an expert on stealth. Too bad Blake is better.
• Strong and Skilled:
  • On the other hand, while Ruby doesn't look like much, she has enough muscles to lift more than a hundred kg and is terrifyingly good with her Scythe when killing Grimm. Pyhrra even asks her to teach her how to use it.
  • Yang gives the impression of a boisterous Brute but she moves with surprising speed and precision. She's trained in special hand-to-hand combat created by her father.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: This is what Ren and Nora's relationship boils down to. In Nora's words, he is The Smart Guy making all the decisions and thinking things through, while she just hits stuff, without much thinking. It's deconstructed a bit. This simple mentality made Nora complacent and with severe uneagerness to learn new things, which reflected on her grades.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Ruby's eyes instantly cause this for whoever looks into them, causing extreme terror that makes the person either be frozen/run in fear or desire to harm/kill her in perceived self-defense. Hence why she constantly wears goggles. Only Ruby herself is immune to the effects, with not even Ozpin being able to look directly at her. Even Yang and Tai, who have been around her with her goggles off long enough to be able to not freak out, still have trouble looking her in the eye. One of Doctor Oobleck's tests, when she enters the academy, is to see if photographs of her eyes would be just as effective. In the original version of the story, they unfortunately are, while the remastered version makes photography the only safe way to look at them.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Yang helps Weiss disguise herself as a ruffian boy so that she can get wings at a Faunus-run restaurant without drawing unwanted attention.
• Taking the Bullet: Blake, already wounded and Auraless, takes a harpoon through the torso when Roman tries to fire it at Ruby. This is enough to finally snap Ruby out of her Unstoppable Rage.
• Taking You with Me: Horrified after hurting Yang in a rage, Ruby becomes determined to finsih Roman off before her head's on the chopping block.
• Team Mom: Ruby might be the leader and heart of the team, bringing the girls together and inspiring them to be better, but it is Yang who smooths over jagged conflicts of personality between them and does her best to create a positive teamwork experience and comfortable homelife in the dorm.
  • For JNPR, it is unquestionably Jaune. His earnest desire to help and learn, his blase reaction to Pyrrha's fame and his insistance on treating his teammates like family he simply hasn't seen for a while all conspired to pull his unrelated group together. While not stated directly, the story implies that between Jaune's experience in a big family and the overall less volatile temperment of it's members, JNPR get by with a lot less drama than RWBY most of the time.
• The Tease: Yang. Just Yang. Though not as much as Nora. Blake indulges in it from time to time, too.
• They Would Cut You Up: What Ruby's family is afraid will happen if anyone finds out about her Semblance. Ozpin thinks they're right. Turns out that's EXACTLY what Ironwood wants to do and almost succeeds in convincing Ozpin to agree to after Ruby snaps and goes on a brutal killing spree after being kidnapped and confined by Torchwick. He only fails because Ruby admits that she would rather kill herself and teams RWBY and JNPR insist that they will look after her and bring her in if anything goes wrong.
• Thinking Up Portals: How Ruby summons the Grimm. She can create ooze-like portals like the ones seen in Salem's domain in canon. At one point, Port tries to learn how they work by sticking his arm in one. The "remastered" version ups this by having Ruby become completely submerged in a portal during initiation, which temporarily turns her into a half-Grimm hybrid.
• This Explains So Much: Blake has this reaction towards Ruby and Yang after finding out that they consider the Training from Hell Taiyang is putting their gym class through normal.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Penny's AI programs keep telling her to kill the rampaging Ruby (lawful), but Penny refuses to kill her first friend and keeps overriding them, to the point that she makes them stop appearing (good).
• Took a Level in Kindness: Weiss towards Ruby after Ruby saves Weiss' life. By the end of the next day, they've resolved to become best friends. Later on, when trying to boost Ruby's confidence, she admits that she's come to greatly admire her.
• Training from Hell: Taiyang's default standard for his daughters and student alike. Blake is shocked to realized that Ruby and Yang consider his methods normal after they're the only ones not completely floored by the warm-up, which is worse than the White Fang's actual drills, and don't think his obstacle course is any more difficult than what they normally do.
  • In the remastered version, when Ozpin watches the footage from Ruby's fight with the Dust thieves, he wants a list of whatever insane standards Qrow has for a trainee hunter since he had called his niece "amateur hour". Ruby and Yang later reference an instance where he made them climb a cliff infested with scorpions, and another where he made them look for javelins in a bay, but weighted one down so that they didn't find it for hours, and only did find it when they swam into the non-pointy end.
• Tranquil Fury: After some of his goons get beaten by Pyrrha so fast he doesn't even really see it, a White Fang officer finds her calm form scarier than Yang's sisterly rage.
• Troll: Yang and Ruby didn't tell the other members of their team and Team JNPR that the person that they were having dinner with was Coco Adel (along with her team), who in this fic is a literal princess, to see their reactions, Yang even snapping a photo.
• Twin Switch: The Malachite siblings did this while dating Yang. She was not pleased when she found out and dumped them.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: The Malachite sisters hoped that this would be the case when they revealed their Twin Switch. Yang just found the idea creepy and dumped them both.
• Unstoppable Rage: Ruby. After Roman kidnaps Blake, shoots her in front of Ruby, and then stuffs Ruby into a crate, the poor girl finally loses control of her powers, and becomes driven to kill him no matter who gets in her way. Worth noting, however, she does restrain herself from killing anyone else, even when given ample opportunity, so she's not completely out of her mind, just not thinking straight and righteously furious at Roman.
  • In the Remastered version, Yang gets into this a bit herself when looking for Ruby.
• Victory Is Boring: Pyrrha's lack of opponents that could give her any real challenge in her arena days has given her this attitude. When she learns that Ruby beat her to second place in the first test rankings (Weiss being first) by a three-point difference in their History test, she's excited at having too put in the extra effort, with a feral smile, and asks Ruby to train with her. This is also why she enjoys the fight against the berserk Ruby in the original story so much, it was more challenging than any fight she'd had before.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the remake's fight with Edward Almost, when he notices Weiss, he becomes completely focused on killing her, even when he knows that he's losing and should flee.
• Weak, but Skilled: Jinqo is a skilled trapper and tactician but she sucks at direct combat. She's perfectly aware of that and runs away from confrontation.
• Wham Episode: There are several.
  • Chapter 14: Roman and Cinder now know where Ruby is, and are making plans to capture her for Salem. Weiss is poisoned by White Fang operatives which fuels her and Yang's anger. Both Weiss and Yang's angry comments about the White Fang prompt Blake to blow up and accidentally reveal her past. Then Blake angrily removes Ruby's goggles and gets a look at her eyes for the first time, prompting her to run out in fear. Oh boy.
  • Chapter 15: Blake gets kidnapped by the Fang, and Torchwick uses her as a hostage to capture Ruby, stuff her in a crate, and ships her to Cinder. Ruby begins to Freak Out, causing her powers to activate out of her control. Cliffhanger. Oh Crap
• Wham Line: In the final chapter, we get this:
  Ironwood: I have no doubt that Ruby Rose has the potential to be a great huntress, but she is so much more than a huntress, so much more than a human, so much more than Ruby Rose. We have to stop talking about her in this manner and address her for what she truly is: what do we do with the Niggurath while she is still in a controllable state?
• What the Hell, Hero?: In the second chapter, Qrow tears Ozpin a verbal new one for letting Ruby into Beacon in spite of the risks, both from her powers and her age. Glynda and Ironwood are equally skeptical but are less... colorful about it.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: What everyone fears that Ruby will become, with averting this being a major concern of Ozpin and his Inner Circle. The story even opens with Ozpin hearing about the robbery and becoming absolutely terrified that they're already too late in stopping her Start of Darkness before Glynda clarifies the situation.
• Worf Had the Flu: While still formidable, Penny only has taken two swords greatly reducing her battle power. She says she left the rest to reduce energy consumption.
• Worthy Opponent: Pyrrha starts to consider Ruby one after she goes berserk and defeats Pyrrha, apparently being the first real challenge she's had in years.
  • In the Remastered version, she displays this attitude to Weiss and Ruby after they manage to outrank her during the first test, getting first and second place, respectively, while she got third.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Ruby admits at one point that she thinks of herself as a monster who doesn't deserve to be in Beacon. Weiss reminds her that Ruby saved her life during Initiation, even though Weiss had been nothing but cruel to her up until that point.
• You Have Failed Me: Cinder to Roman and Neo in the last chapter, though Salem intervenes on their behalf. Notably, it wasn't Roman's failure to catch Ruby, but the fact that Cinder told him not to go after her at all without Cinder's permission, and that he completely botched their plan for Beacon in the process.

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