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Characters / The RWBY Loops

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    Post-Volume 2/Initial 8 Loopers 
The eight Loopers who are shown to activate in the first chapter of the fic.

Ruby Rose

Anchor for the world of Remnant. Lover of guns, proud owner of a corgi, and overall nice girl.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: One variation of Crescent Rose was so sharp it could cut simply by being looked at.
  • All-Loving Hero: Ruby tries to invoke this, regularly saying that while it's her job to stop evil, that doesn't mean she has to hate evil. As such, she regularly tries to get inside the heads of the villains to see why they do what they do, hoping to find some hope for them. This would slowly start waning over the eons, never really hitting too hard until the Volume 7 expansions hit. While she had disliked others like Jacques Schnee and Marcus Black, after Tyrian's massacre at Robyn's rally in Baseline, she has reached her limit with him and declared him one of the few people she actually hates. Alucard would deconstruct this while speaking with Weiss. He notes that Ruby has ultimately taken the hardest of all tasks regarding baseline, attempting to understand it and everything it throws at them, and that unless she manages to handle it perfectly, it will destroy her.
  • Berserk Button: Don’t steal Crescent Rose. Or imply that she's not alive. Ruby will go Mama Bear on you with full looping shenanigans.
  • Collector of the Strange: Ruby has made it a hobby to collect baseline weapons from all across the multiverse. She's created an entire museum of weapons in her Pocket, using the Starkiller Base to house them.
  • Genki Girl: Looping has not diminished this. It's practically been reinforced.
  • Humanoid Abomination: After a number of fused Loops, Ruby is really some strange amalgamation of magic like Majin Buu and a sentient colony of Chibi Rubies.
  • I Knew It!: She's had a suspicion that Ozpin was Looping and apparently took up bets with her fellow Loopers when he finally came clean.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Turned her pet Corgi Zwei into a War Corgi.
  • Nice Girl: Is very nice, as per canon. This eventually evolves as Ruby grows older and wiser, to the point where she is ready and able to help every person she meets, and holds the opinion that every person has good in them.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Ruby is very fond of a number of other loopers, to the point of forming an adoptive family tree in which she has no less than eight siblings, only two of which are from her home reality. The feeling is generally mutual.
  • The Paragon: Becomes an example to her Loopers of a hopeful, empathetic leader that always does what she thinks is right... To the point where she unconditionally trusted Cinder Fall's claim of goodness, despite Cinder both being the main villain of Remnant and Cinder still being evil, just secretly, opening up a very dangerous can of worms.
    • It's later revealed that this was a deliberate move on her part, in order to help Cinder cope with her unique looping situation. It pays off when Cinder decides to call off her Ascension attempt after Ruby appeals to her experiences as a looper.
  • Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Ruby tries to claim to be asexual, but her fellow Loopers call her out on it and reveals she's just uncomfortable with the idea of sex, especially with a non-Looper since she's far older than they'll ever be. She flirts heavily with Jaune as a joke, but as soon as he called her bluff, she put ten feet between them in a second of panic.
  • Shipper on Deck: She's been described as a Multishipper, shipping for ship's sake. In an interesting twist, she restrains herself to unawake or nonlooping individuals who may have an attraction to each other, and has generally only shipped loopers who are already in a romantic relationship (aside from a few early chapters).
  • Stepford Smiler: Ruby still tries to portray herself as the young, energetic, naive girl she was in baseline to mask how truly world-weary she's become since looping. That said, Weiss (Awake or not) is usually able to pick up on when she's really suffering and help her out.
  • Super-Speed: On top of her natural Semblance, Ruby is also connected to the Speed Force.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Terrified of rabbits. She implies that in the loops, they are rarely as innocently cute as they appear.
    • She decided one Loop to fix this... by insulting Angel Bunny with an epic insult. It didn’t work, but Angel was impressed.

Weiss Schnee

Ruby's partner in baseline and one of her closest and first friends. Weiss is the heir to the Schnee Dust Corporation, which thanks to its labor practices, is that target of Faunus Supremacist movement White Fang. While she does want to restore her family honor, her time in the loops is mostly spent helping others remain psychologically stable.
  • Armored Closet Gay: For literal eons she has denied having any romantic inclanation towards Ruby, repeatedly claiming she's her best friend and close to a sister to her. However, once Alucard manages to get to her, he makes it painfully clear to her she's been buried in the closest. She'd been carrying a torch for Ruby but was afraid to say anything after she got together with Penny, and instead redirected those feelings into motivation to be the best Second for Ruby. Even though Weiss is later willing to admit he was right about his other prognosis', she adamantly refuses to admit he was right on this. It took her realizing she was staring at Ruby's ass in tennis shorts to even admit he might be right.
  • Disabled in the Adaptation: Weiss initially seemed focus on the well-being of others before her own, so other characters assumed she was a workaholic until Alucard becomes her therapist. Her self-worth is based on being Remnant's Second Looper, she has OCD, PTSD and overall anxiety. Her Jedi training has reinforced her flaws, she's struggling with suppressing her sexuality and she suffers from Guilt Complex.
  • Emotion Suppression: She has a bad habit of doing this. She feels that as Remnant's Second Looper, she has to be a pillar of support for Ruby and the others, even taking up psychology in order to be their psychologist. Problem is, she kept neglecting her own mental health in the process. While she was aware of the irony, she still kept doing it and rationalizing it as needing to help the others first and foremost, not helped by her picking up the Jedi's habit of emotion suppression. It reached an apex during the Volume 6 expansions, namely seeing Adam's brand. Once the expansions ended, she broke, spending an entire loop razing the upper class and racist parts of Atlas as the "Frozen Banshee", crying Berserker Tears the entire time. While she did start recovering, the Volume 7 expansions caused it again, requiring Blake and Yang get her an intervention from Alucard. End result, Alucard is now her therapist, her workload has been reduced and Pyrrha has taken up a position as Remnant's second psychiatrist, she needs to practice actual meditation rather than the Jedi kind, find a hobby outside of the loopers, and actually explore her emotions rather than ignore them.
  • Laser Blade: Her lightsaber, obviously.
  • Living Weapon: After looping enough times to the Soul Eater branch, Weiss has permanently taken to being a Demon Weapon, namely a Scythe, and Ruby's partner. As such, she has no issue eating evil souls or drinking blood, and taking on those traits gives her Scary Teeth much like Soul Evans'.
  • Only Sane Man: The oldest Looper of Remnant after Ruby, Weiss has come to hold almost inhuman decorum, tolerance, and snark. This starts to lessen as more and more things are revealed about her baseline home and the stress gets too much.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: retains the ability to, upon death, return as a Force Ghost.
  • The Shrink: Weiss has taken up psychology in order to help her friends cope with the infinite loops. And is actually very good at it.

Blake Belladonna

Yang Xiao Long's partner slash girlfriend (and eventual wife), Blake's past is, to put it lightly, checkered. She is a former member of the White Fang, but abandoned the organization after she felt that it had become to extreme. This has caused some tensions with Weiss in the past, and does lead to some friction when they are not Awake. Nonetheless, she has become devoted to her 'looping family' and settled happily into her role.
  • Happily Married: After a very long courting period, she and Yang had a five-chapter wedding.
  • Magical Eyes: relies upon Sharingan to up her combat abilities.

Yang Xiao Long

Blake's partner and Ruby's elder (and bustier) sister, Yang and Blake started looping at the same time and typically are Awake in the same loops. Yang's initial focus in the loops is using the cyclical nature of time to try and track down her Missing Mom, but this proved to me much harder than she anticipated, and she abandoned the effort for general shenanigans after some time.
  • Artificial Limbs: She starts a collection after the Volume 3 expansions end, both on her own and taking some donations from friends and family. Most of her modern ones are designed to look like her baseline arm.
  • Happily Married: After a very long courting period, she and Blake had a five-chapter wedding.
  • Missing Mom: her mother, Raven, is not present in her life, excluding one moment where she saved Yang's life. This led Yang to capitalize on that moment to kidnap her mother back into her life, though she eventually dropped the habit after expansions fleshed out Raven's backstory.
  • Smarter Than You Look: Even more so then in canon. Weiss claims she's thought hard about the philosophy of being a hard-partying bimbo, and she occasionally reminds people she has a surgery license.

Jaune Arc

Leader of team JNPR, partner of Pyrrha (who started looping at the same time as him), and not exactly an action guy. Appeared to be oblivious to Pyrrha's romantic feelings, but eventually revealed he had similar feelings and ended up marrying her. Serves as a rock of sanity for his team and Remnant in general, which is a position much needed.

Pyrrha Nikos

Jaune's partner on JNPR, Pyrrha is an incredibly capable girl, but has experienced significant issues with self-expression, most notably with her romantic feelings toward Jaune. She did eventually confess and, after an initial misstep, the two joined together in a romantic couple. She has since become something of a general emotional advisor to the Remnant loopers.
  • Action Mom: the adoptive mother of Ren and Nora.
  • Badass Family: JNPR, natch.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: But it doesn't feel that way.
  • Official Couple: After several loops, she finally confessed her feelings to Jaune and discovered that he returned them, and after an initial setback they finally became a couple.
  • Sanity Slippage: It's subtle, but still there. After Cinder's attempted ascension, Pyrrha began harboring resentment and hatred for Cinder, only to continually repress it due to Cinder trying to atone. After Penny's fragmentation incident and Ruby's reabsorbing of Chibi-Salem however, something in Pyrrha snapped. She began acting like an Inspector Javert, convinced Cinder had been manipulating things and deliberately tried hurting Ruby and Penny, and felt the others had been letting Cinder get away with things for too long. To this end, she resolved to stop Cinder herself, that she doesn't care if Cinder still has the urge to indulge, she will stop her and kill her, even if she's awake. It eventually kept escalating, to the point Pyrrha would kill her for minor things, and if Cinder even tries to fight back Pyrrha will blame all the collateral damage on her. Cinder even points out that she's willing to let the others get away with the same, but turns Knight Templar on her. Time will tell if Pyrrha devolves further.

Nora Valkyrie

Hammer wielding, energetic member of team JNPR, Nora also hides some romantic feelings to Ren, her partner and adoptive brother. Their relationship was strained after Ren's lack of reaction to baseline, but they eventually agreed to disagree.
  • Badass Family: JNPR, natch.
  • Relationship Upgrade: Well, they start dating, anyway. Apparently holding hands after killing the monster that destroyed their hometown counts.
  • Romantic False Lead: with Ren. They're friends, but are prepared to wait for confirmation from Baseline, especially as they consider each other siblings in the loops.

Lie Ren

Subdued martial artist of team JNPR, Ren and Nora started looping at the same time, much like everyone else. Like his partner, he also has romantic feelings for Nora.

    Pre-Volume 3 Loopers 
Loopers who activated after the initial introduction to the multiverse at large, but before Volume 3 became a factor.

Roman Torchwick

One of the Villainous loopers, who tried to figure out what has been happening without being discovered or caught. Unfortunately, he and Neo caught the attention of Headmaster Ozpin, who promptly recruited them in 'teaching' other loopers in exchange for his silence. After V3 expansions, they decided to break with Ozpin and reveal themselves publicly. After his death in Baseline, Roman has largely taken to just indulging in his hedonistic desires.
  • A Day in the Limelight: He becomes the main focus of the Phasmophobia mini-arc, much to his dismay.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Roman and Neo may be violent maniacs, thieves, and killers, but they also dearly care for one another, and Roman's death hit Neo rather hard.
  • Butt-Monkey: For the Phasmophobia mini-arc. Since the loop activated despite being very buggy, a bug got attached to Roman that made it so that he would always get killed by a ghost no matter what, even if in a safe space like the van, and that he'd only loop there. Even if he was already killed, his ghost would get killed. It gets bad enough that Marianne and Fenrir take notice and convince Skuld to quarantine the loop until it's debugged.
  • Friendly Enemy: After a while, Roman and Neo got to be on good terms with the other heroic Loopers, treating their stances with a very casual air.
  • Impossible Thief: Roman, thanks to his age and occupation, has this in spades, though does not usually use it.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Roman is a lot sharper than people give him credit for. Without missing a beat, he was able to get himself and Neo free from both Cinder and Ozpin's influence by using his own Stealth Looping and certain variants to his advantage.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Roman and Neo are always close to each other in the Loops, but their exact relationship tends to vary. When they first started Looping, Roman had memories of Neo being his little sister, while Neo remembered Roman as being her father.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: Roman and Neo tend to keep their heads down and not go overboard with their Looping powers for fear of being labeled as MLE.
  • Stealth Expert: In the vein of the Star Trek Loopers.

Neopolitan Torchwick

One of the Villainous loopers, who tried to figure out what has been happening without being discovered or caught. Unfortunately, she and Roman caught the attention of Headmaster Ozpin, who promptly recruited them in 'teaching' other loopers in exchange for his silence. After V3 expansions, they decided to break with Ozpin and reveal themselves publicly. After Roman's Baseline death, she secretly harbored a grudge against Cinder and tried to engineer her breakdown, unknowingly interfering with Slenderman's own attempt and instead causing the Tale of the Two Sisters. She largely indulges in her own hedonistic desires when not hanging out with Roman.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Roman and Neo may be violent maniacs, thieves, and killers, but they also dearly care for one another, and Roman's death hit Neo rather hard.
  • Cute and Psycho: Neopolitan, much like her baseline self, but exacerbated by her age, and training from The Joker himself.
  • Cute Mute: While she could talk before the Volume 3 expansions and still can, many times after the Chibi and Volume 6 expansions she's Awoke to find her vocal cords damaged, limiting her to Talking with Signs till either the Loop ends or she can regenerate her vocal cords.
  • Friendly Enemy: After a while, Roman and Neo got to be on good terms with the other heroic Loopers, treating their stances with a very casual air.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Roman and Neo are always close to each other in the Loops, but their exact relationship tends to vary. When they first started Looping, Roman had memories of Neo being his little sister, while Neo remembered Roman as being her father.
  • Odd Friendship: She's got one with Oscar. While Neo's got a case of Vague Age, she and Oscar are considered the youngest loopers baseline wise, and they often get along since they get to act their believed physical age and just have fun together. So when the Volume 7 Expansions hit and it looked like Neo attacked Oscar, she did something she never does and outright expresses concern for him, since she values her friendship with him that much.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Neo is an open sociopath and cares very little for standard morals. So when she approaches Oscar one day and actually expresses remorse towards him, its evidence enough to him that she's really shaken up by something.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: Roman and Neo tend to keep their heads down and not go overboard with their Looping powers for fear of being labeled as MLE.
  • Stealth Expert: In the vein of the Star Trek Loopers.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Ice Cream, to the point she can be bribed with it and will get into fights with other Loopers if they deny her access to her frozen treats.
  • Troll: Neo tends to do things largely just to fuck with people, even releasing Tribbles on Mantle just to get Weiss frazzled.
  • Wild Card: Neo is a lot less predictable than Roman and many fear she might be showing signs of Sakura Syndrome. Outside of that, more often than not the only reason she has behind her actions is self-interest, typically either to alleviate boredom or out of pure hedonism.

Headmaster Ozpin

The Headmaster of Beacon Huntsmen Academy, Ozpin turned into a Stealth Looper to try and teach his students most effectively, while hiding from any possible enemies or MLE's. Has since made his presence public though.
  • Loves Secrecy: because of his history of upholding The Masquerade, he has a tendency to not reveal information to the other Loopers unless he believes it directly affects them. Everyone tends to get mad when they inevitably find out about it.
  • Old Master: Tried to fulfill this role as a Stealth Looper, acting as a hidden teacher for his students, arranging for tests and lessons to be taught through combat.
  • Stealth Expert: Once pretended he had a time-based Semblance that allowed him to act like a Looper without revealing he was Looping. Even before that, he slipped under the radar for a very long time.

Zwei the Corgi

The eponymous War Corgi. Ruby and Yang's pet dog.
  • Abnormal Ammo: After being made into a War Corgi, Zwei gained the ability to fire cannonballs... by pissing them.
  • Canine Companion: To the Loopers usually, occasionally acting as a therapy pet too.
  • Playful Hacker: As a "Data Dog" Zwei is capable of breaking into some of the most advanced computer systems in the multiverse, a talent he uses for his amusement and benefit.
  • Talking Animal: A time-traveling dimension hopping sentient talking Corgi.

Glynda Goodwitch

A teacher at Beacon Academy, specializing in Dust and Magic. Previously a Stealth Looper, she revealed herself to Ruby and later to the other Loopers.

Cinder Fall-Rose

A villainess who ended up thinking she was Ruby's adoptive older sister, and then actually became Ruby's adoptive older sister... or did she?
  • Becoming the Mask: She claims at first to have started Looping in a world where she was Ruby's sister (she was lying). However, while she still has sociopathic tendencies at times, and will deny it even to herself, it's clear that she's becoming a case of Even Evil Has Loved Ones with teams RWBY and JNPR. This ultimately is the root cause of her Sanity Slippage.
  • Demoted to Dragon: When she was first introduced, she was the Big Bad of Remnant. And then expansions went and introduced Salem, The Man Behind the Man who was using Cinder as a pawn. Looper!Cinder hated this, because her entire motivation (canonical and in the loops) was personal power, and before Salem showed up she'd gotten used to being beholden to no one and the biggest threat around.
  • I Am What I Am: Because Cinder's baseline background is the least defined, she greatly values what little she is aware of. After the "Tale of Two Sisters" arc allowed her to finally reconcile her green and red halfs, Cinder began openly embracing her more destructive tendencies. But when the other loopers tried lightening the mood by encouraging her to act like a Card-Carrying Villain or Pyrrha repeatedly and brutally ending Cinder before her plans can even get off the ground, Cinder began developing a complex thinking the others refused to accept her "Fall" half and simply preferred her "Rose" half, despite repeated assurance to the contrary.
  • Morality Pet: Ruby is this to her, even if she won't admit it.
  • Reformed, but Not Tamed: After the "Tale of Two Sisters" ended in her personalities merging again, Cinder has retained a good chunk of the positive traits associated with her green half, but just as many negative traits from her red half. So while she is ultimately more moral and compassionate, she still isn't truly a good person, and will gladly repeat her baseline actions up to a point under the rationale that they define her, treating it like a game to see if the other loopers can stop her.
  • Sanity Slippage: There is something very much wrong with her. After she began to become the mask, the conflicting elements of Evil Feels Good and Good Feels Good caused her to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder, creating the green half, aka Cinder Rose, and the red half, aka Cinder Fall.

    Volume 3 & Post-V 3 Loopers 
Loopers who activated either during Volume 3 or after it. Some of these characters were defined by Volume 3, and therefore couldn't have existed in the Loops before it.

Qrow Branwen

Ruby's uncle, and Ozpin's spy.
  • Family of Choice: As far as baseline is concerned, Qrow and Ruby share no blood, but they're dearly close to one another.
  • Official Couple: with Winter, after a long stint as Friends with Benefits.
  • Stealth Expert: by accident. Since his and Ruby's paths didn't cross that much, he ended up Stealth Looping by default. He eventually got kicked out of it and reconnected with his nieces.

Winter Schnee

Weiss' elder sister and Ironwood's subordinate.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed.She admits she had issues with the Chibi-loop where it played out like Qrow and Taiyang were a married couple and has some issues with Clover developing a bond with Qrow baseline. But she has also brought up the idea of Qrow having an open relationship with both her and Clover.
  • Male Might, Female Finesse: She wields a dainty rapier with a fencing dagger inside of it. Qrow's sword is as broad as his shoulders, almost as tall as him, can transform into a scythe, and is a sawed-off shotgun. She fights with her family magic, he relies on old fashion aura, steel and lead. She's composed and proper by default, Qrow is always drunk. They're lovers.
  • May–December Romance: Qrow is at least twice her age, physically speaking. Mentally they're about the same though.
  • Not So Above It All: She is a very responsible and competent who take her duties seriously. That said, she is more than willing to carry out her own shenanigans.
  • Official Couple: With Qrow, after a long stint as Friends with Benefits.
  • Stealth Expert: an accidental version. Due to being in Atlas most of the time, she never got the Welcome To The Multiverse speech and started Stealth Looping by mistake. She and Qrow eventually found each other out though.

Penny Polendina

A robot girl who was invented in Atlas... and killed by Pyrrha.
  • Ax-Crazy: After her Sanity Slippage caused her to instigate Literal Split Personality, three of the "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s" became this. Number Two represented Penny's desire to fulfill her original purpose: save the world, and as such was a Knight Templar hellbent on killing the villains. Number Eight represented Penny's bottled up resentment at being the only sapient robot in a world run by organics. Number 10 represented Penny's built up anger, albeit directionless due to lacking her loop memories. Because of this, Two was able to convince Eight and Ten to aid her in attacking the villains, succeeding in killing Roman, Neo, Cinder, and Mercury, only missing Emerald because Monika intervened. The entire time, they cared little for the collateral damage they caused and decried the civilians as ungrateful bastards. Monika had to beat them to near death just to get them back into the pods to initiate the Split-Personality Merge, and they didn't make it easy.
  • Become A Real Girl: An early goal for her, which was granted by the Volume 8 expansions. However, she then shortly rejected it, deciding her true self is the machine she always was.
  • Beneath the Mask: While Penny puts on an optimistic front, in truth she deeply compartmentalizes her issues for the sake of keeping the others happy, the mask only breaking when she had a bout of Sanity Slippage. This is best represented when she creates the "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s", each one representing a part of her psyche, and more than half of them representing deep seated issues she'd been hiding.
  • Character Development: Started as a severely traumatized robot girl with PTSD over dying, and after a few centuries and millennia of hard work eventually healed herself, improved, and forgave the people who caused her death, even managing to become close friends with Pyrrha.
  • Conflicting Loyalty: Penny feels duty bound to fulfill her baseline purpose of creation, to save the world and stop evil. However, she feels just as duty bound to accept the more villainous loopers as part of the family due to Ruby's acceptance of them and her love for Ruby. The cognitive dissonance she ends up experiencing is only furthered in regards to Ruby's stance on "evil". Ruby feels it isn't her job to hate evil, but to understand it. Penny meanwhile ascribes to Battle Angel Alita's stance, that she can't stand by in the presence of evil. Her inability to reconcile this eventually reaches the point she suffers Sanity Slippage. Of the resulting "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s", Number's Two and Three embody the conflict. Number Two is a Knight Templar who considers herself a weapon whose job is to stop evil, and will stop at nothing to do so. Number Three however considers her duty to her loved ones paramount, and will stop at nothing to protect them. Fittingly, Number Two puts Number Three in stasis so that she can't stop her from hunting the villains.
  • Literal Split Personality: As a result of Sanity Slippage, Penny proceeded to fragment herself into ten "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s" representing her personality in the hopes she can talk out her issues with herself. None of them possess her looping memories however, and are largely the personifications of Penny's emotions. What remained of the original was dubbed "Penny Prime" and left an Empty Shell, while the others were numbered 2-11. Unfortunately, as she had been suffering cognitive dissonance at the time and was unable to reconcile the more villainous loopers behavior with her baseline function of saving the world, Penny Two convinced Prime to tell her where the villains were hiding out, then took Penny's Eight and Ten to deal with them, leaving Five and Nine to keep Three from interfering. At the same time, Four sneaked off to go on a date with Ruby. Two, Eight, and Ten succeeded in killing Roman, Neo, Cinder, and Mercury, only failing to kill Emerald thanks to the intervention of Monika, and would have gone to Mistral were it not for Monika stopping them. Monika then forces a Split-Personality Merge to stop them from causing anymore damage.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: After her Split-Personality Merge is completed, she breaks down crying over remembering what her "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s" did, and attempts to bottle up the issues again. Luckily, Monika is still in the room and stops her from doing so.
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: Passed as human, for a while at least, enough to fool many other people, and spent many of her earliest loops fine-tuning her human aspects.
  • Sanity Slippage: After the Volume 6 expansions, Penny began suffering from cognitive dissonance, incapable of reconciling contradicting aspects of her personality with her baseline purpose of saving the world, as well as finding herself concerned that her relationship with Ruby wasn't genuine. Unable to seek aid from Weiss due to thinking she would have Ruby's interests as a priority, Penny attempted to fragment herself so as to talk her problems out with herself. What happens is they become a case of Literal Split Personality, the ten "A.S.P.E.C.T.'s" having conflicting ideas on what to do, with three of them going on a rampage across the Loop trying to kill the villains, and another attempting to have fun with Ruby regardless of her other responsibilities. Luckily, Monika was in the loop and was concerned about the real Penny, and forced a Split-Personality Merge between them to try and bring the real Penny back.
  • Trauma Button: Pyrrha, since Pyrrha was the one who killed her. This later faded, only to return full force with her second, seemingly more permanent death to Cinder.

General James Ironwood

Head of the Atlesian Military Forces and Headmaster of Atlas Hunting Academy. Ozpin's peer.
  • Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed. He started looping after the Volume 3 Expansions but before his Baseline self was revealed to have undergone Sanity Slippage, meaning his characterization fell in line with that of his depiction in the Beacon arc. Thanks to the Loops, he was able to experience a variety of things his Baseline self couldn't, leading to the two diverging enough that, by time for the Volume 7 expansions, Looper!Ironwood was vastly different and much more stable, to the point he has denounced his Baseline self as Beyond Redemption. This is especially apparent when the two have the rare chance of interacting with each other, with Looper!Ironwood being just and stable, while Baseline!Ironwood is despotic and unhinged.
    Baseline!Ironwood: I don't believe it.
    Looper!Ironwood: And that, is why you fail.
  • Always Second Best: Has let this consume him, from time to time, as his status as teacher and general are done much better by Weiss and Ozpin, leaving him to feel useless at time.
  • Beard of Sorrow: Averted. Part of how he differentiates himself from his Baseline self is that while his Baseline self has one, Looper!Ironwood usually gets rid of it at the first opportunity.
  • Better as Friends: Hopped off of the Glynda/Ironwood ship a long time ago, settling for Better as Friends.
  • Blessed with Suck: His opinion on his Semblance, "Mettle", after it was revealed. After a series of Loops where he first gains it, he initially thinks it's just a series of variants and that the Tree is messing with him, since there is no way his Semblance would be that useless, since it's something he can already do with just his Looping abilities. Upon learning from Ozpin and Glynda that it's his baseline Semblance though, Ironwood is so angered he goes off and fights Grimm at the mere mention of it. He not only single handedly wipes out the Apathy at Brunswick Farms, the entire hoard being as effective on him as a single Apathy is on Ruby, he takes a trip to Mt. Glenn to 1v1 Kevin, the result being a mushroom cloud visible all the way at Beacon.
  • Only Sane Man: Has freaks of weirdness on occasion, but is stable, controlled, honest and introspective, though this has led to angst moments.
  • Stealth Expert: Subverted, and Played Straight. Initially Weiss guessed that with Penny Looping he would be the sensible companion to her, and so connected with him. But Ironwood soon picked up the habit of stealthing if he woke up after the fall of Beacon, due to personal guilt.
  • That Man Is Dead: After the events of Volume 7, Ironwood has declared his Baseline self to be Beyond Redemption, and is committed to fully divorcing himself from Baseline. As such, he's given the other Loopers carte blanche to make sure his unawake self does not retain his position as General, nor his two council seats.

    Post-Volume 4/'Tale of Two Sisters' Loopers 
Loopers who activated almost immediately after the end of Volume 3, in an attempt to stabilize the RWBY branch after the horror that was Cinder's attempted ascension.

Sun Wukong

Monkey Faunus with a cheeky side. Activated by The Tale of Two Sisters.
  • Hopeless Suitor: Unfortunately for Sun, when he began looping he was still carrying a torch for Blake. By that point however, Blake and Yang were in a committed relationship, and the event that started his looping pushed them to get engaged. It took a long time for him, but he did eventually manage to get over Blake, and is now happily apart of their overall looping family.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • Sun has apparently spent numerous loops attempting to cure Neptune's hydrophobia. Every time ends in disaster. One attempt ended so badly it summoned forth a massive Leviathan that had an 85 percent chance of crashing the loop. How any of this is actually possible is never made clear.
    • He apparently did something to annoy Weiss' honey badger kaiju, so now he's the only looper they don't like. Not even Weiss knows what he did.
  • Private Detective: Moonlights as one, sometimes seriously, sometimes jokingly, always dressed to kill.
  • Smarter Than You Look: A common joke is that Sun is an adorable idiot, but he has proven emotionally sensitive and capable of articulating the complexity of the loops.
  • Training from Hell: Ended up on the receiving end of this courtesy of Roman Torchwick, whose idea of training amounted to "kill Sun, a lot." Sun eventually just got around to expecting death, and ended up nearly unkillable.

Kali Belladonna

Blake's caring cat-mom, who was activated by the Tale of Two Sisters.
  • Action Survivor: Kali turns into this during the Tale of Two Sisters.
  • The Gunslinger: As a result of replacing Vash the Stampede during her formative loop, Kali took up a variety of guns, with the required skill to make her second only to Ruby in gun-fighting.
  • Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Blake is a large fan of classic literature and programs, whether it be the likes of Shakespeare or classic anime. Kali however finds more enjoyment in things like Sword Art Online Abridged, much to Blake's anger and frustration.
  • Non-Action Guy: A rare female example, it is repeatedly and explicitly pointed out that she is the only Remnant looper with no formal combat experience and qualifies as a civilian. She makes up for it by being willing to accept loopers without question. Eventually subverted after having a Trigun loop.
  • Team Mom: Even after becoming The Gunslinger, Kali tends to work best as a motherly figure to the rest of the Loopers, made even more apparent once Ghira begins looping too, as the two of them pretty much make their home into a place for Loopers to go to when they need to calm down, and even try to give some basis of care for a looping Mercury.

Taiyang Xiao Long

Ruby and Yang's devoted father. He was activated by the Tale of Two Sisters.
  • Action Dad: Not on the level of his daughters, but also a Huntsman and teacher of other Huntsmen and Huntresses.
  • Brain Bleach: The first time he loops in as a woman, he reads his loop memories and learns that not only were Raven and Summer men that loop, but Tai gave birth to Ruby and Yang. He tries to suppress that knowledge by groping his new breasts until Ruby and Yang remind him.
  • Man, I Feel Like a Woman: The first time he loops in as a woman, he can't stop himself from groping his breasts.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The young and naive sensitive guy to Qrow's older and wiser manly man.
  • Sex God: Downplayed. While he's had experience with two wives and is presumably capable of seducing and/or pleasuring any number of people, he has settled into his family life by the time he started looping (although he did have a tryst with the Lotus).

Raven Branwen

Yang's biological mother and Qrow's twin sister. She was activated by the Tale of Two Sisters.
  • Brutal Honesty: She doesn't exactly mince words, and is perfectly willing to call people out on their bullshit. Such as giving Emerald "The Reason You Suck" Speech for trying to get Cinder to act more like her Baseline self or carrying her grudge into the loops.
  • Dark Action Girl: She's not on the level of her daughter, but she's still a former Huntress and leader of the Branwen Bandit Tribe.
  • Did You Think I Can't Feel?: Tries to hide it, but her Baseline immorality has shaken her up.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: Raven may be an ass, but she does care about Yang, Tai, and Qrow in Baseline. After she started looping though, while she may act like a prickly bitch, she does care about the mess of a Tangled Family Tree that is the Remnant Loopers. She even came to see Vernal as her adoptive daughter, and after kidnapping him repeatedly, came to see Whitley as her adoptive son. After the Volume 6 expansions explained Salem's past, she actually prayed to Yggdrasil and made clear that for all she may act, she does love her family.
  • Magical Girl Warrior: Well, magical mom, but still. Raven is the Spring Maiden.
  • Poisoned Weapons: After replacing Akame one loop, she obtained her Teigu Murasame.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: With her twin brother Qrow. He's in a steady relationship, has a very positive relationship with his nieces, and is several millennia older. She's single as hell, has it rocky with her own daughter, and is young, as Loopers of Remnant go.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Due to her being a bandit queen who abandoned her daughter in baseline, and a few additional instances of tension between her and other loopers, Raven is one of the more distant of the group. JNPR in particular aren't that fond of her due to Social Darwinism mindset, repeatedly trying to stop the Tribe from attacking Shion Village, and many Variant Loops where Raven and the Branwen Tribe are responsible for Nora and Ren being orphaned. Her closest relationship outside of her immediate family is an Odd Friendship with Kali. While this has lessened over the eons, many aren't afraid to point out when she's being a bitch.

    Post-Volume 5 Loopers 

Oscar Pine

A farm boy who becomes host to Ozpin's soul after his baseline death. In the loops, this left Oscar and Ozpin soulbound, which effectively meant Oscar would be a voice in Ozpin's head whenever he was Awake. Neither of them were happy about this situation but, thankfully, Oscar Activated as a full looper after the Volume 5 expansions and has resettled into the looper community.
  • Farm Boy: His life before Ozpin first ended up in his head was that of a simple farmer living with his aunt. As a looper, his looping identity is tied into this, as he grows large amounts of crops and livestock in his pocket, then usually makes food for the other loopers using what they produce. Specifically ice cream.
  • Odd Friendship: He's got one with Neo. While Neo's got a case of Vague Age, she and Oscar are considered the youngest loopers baseline wise, and they often get along since they get to act their believed physical age and just have fun together.
  • Present Absence: Because of the soul bond he had with Ozpin, he was always present whenever Ozpin awoke from the moment said bond was solidified in baseline, even in spite of him already existing in Mistral. Because of this, Ozpin would occasionally let him take the wheel or let him chill in their Pocket until he died and Oscar regained full control back in Mistral. But more often than not, he would just be sitting as an observer.

Ghira Belladonna

Blake's father and Kali's husband, Ghira had to deal with his wife and daughter having looped for quite some time without him upon Activation and making some interesting bonds. They were quick to reassure him he was still part of their family and an important one, and he's become something of a generally philosophical paternal figure to the loopers of Remnant in general.
  • Only Sane Man: While he's no stranger to looper antics, Ghira more often than not plays this role to the other loopers.
  • Pungeon Master: Something he finds he has in common with his daughter-in-law. Problem is, some of his puns or jokes are bad enough that even Kali wants to Dope Slap him.
    The residents of Menagerie were then treated to the sight of their leader being chased through the streets by an irate housewife wielding a tea tray.

Ilia Amitola-Belladonna

A former White Fang companion of Blake, Ilia was thrust into the loops with little warning and found her previous emotional bonds thrown into chaos due to developments that happened prior to her activation. During her initial pain and confusion, she bonded with fellow new looper Emerald; she later settled into a relationship with her and was adopted by the Belladonna family.
  • Birds of a Feather: Ilia believes this is the reason she and Emerald were made a looping pair. They were both people with good hearts but led down the wrong path, as well as being hopeless suitors for pre-existing loopers.
  • Happily Adopted: Twofold. For one, after largely moving on from Blake, she accepted Ghira's offer to adopt her, making her Ghira and Kali's daughter and Blake's little sister. For another, after a loop set shortly after her parents died she met North Dakota, and after he treated her so nicely and she woke up in his twin South's place one loop, she declared herself his little sister, and he happily reciprocated.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Much to her chagrin, everyone keeps referring to her as a ninja thanks to her position in the White Fang and outfit. And she isn't exactly the most stealthy individual when factoring in her skin changing colors.
  • Hopeless Suitor: Much like Sun, when she started looping she was still carrying a torch for Blake, but by that point, Blake was already engaged to Yang, and the two had decided their relationship would be exclusive unless they both agreed on a partner. While it hurt at first, time was able to heal Ilia's heart, and she moved on enough to not only become an adopted member of the Belladonna family, but also start dating Emerald.
  • Improbable Weapon User: One of her earliest loops let her generate Skittles from her hands or turn things into Skittles. Much later, she proceeded to use this power to kill Salem and defeat her council!
    Ilia: TASTE THE RAINBOW, BITCHES!
  • Person as Verb: Due to her perceived tendency to stand on railings in baseline, the Renmant loopers have taken to calling instances of people doing this as "pulling an Ilia".

Emerald Sustrai

A former street thief and loyal minion of Cinder, Emerald Activated shortly after the Volume 5 expansions. She had to deal with Cinder apparently coming back from the dead and also having a very different personality in the loops. After an initial period of serious soul-searching, she has settled into being the looping Cinder's loyal if snarky henchman and breaking from Unawake Cinders as she feels is appropriate.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Chapter 118 is largely focused on loops involving Emerald's struggle to adapt to the loops, specifically the looping Cinder, before eventually beginning to acclimate. It also details her interactions with some of the other loopers, namely Roman, Neo, Raven, and Ilia.
  • Undying Loyalty: She still had this when she started looping. Unfortunately though, it was for Baseline Cinder. Because of the stark differences between her Looping and Baseline selves though, Emerald was unable to reconcile the two, and desperately tried to get Cinder back to her Baseline behavior, even repeatedly consulting non-looping versions of Cinder for ideas. She eventually managed to subvert this, as while she still cares about Cinder, she's not only come to accept her looping self, but also managed to lose the fanaticism she once had and see her more as family.

    Post-Volume 6/Crisis Loopers 

Maria Calavera

Former legendary huntress who activated after the volume 6 expansions.
  • Cool Old Lady: Even though she is one of the youngest loopers, she's still biologically the oldest of them, and often fulfills the role of the cool granny for a lot of them, namely Ruby.
  • Fountain of Youth: After running into the Old Spice Man, he grants her the ability to return to her age when she was the Grimm Reaper so long as she lights herself on fire. And its a permanent ability.
  • Seen It All: Having been the famed Grimm Reaper, very little actually phases Maria, even with the absurdity of the Loops going on. It takes meeting the Old Spice Man to be genuinely awestruck again.
  • Troll: While not to Mercury's extent, she does tend to enjoy screwing with the other loopers heads, specifically Ruby. Ruby herself is aware of this, since, while in a mania induced by her Tangled Family Tree, she immediately considers the possibility Maria will pick being Salem's cousin just because it's the most distant part on the tree.

Mercury Black

Son of the assassin Marcus Black, another Cinder's minions. Activated at some point during the Volume 7 expansions, and is currently attempting to Stealth until he has a better grasp on the Loops. Unfortunately for him, so many of Remnant's Loopers did the same that no one was fooled, but are letting him believe otherwise for the time being.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: He manages to start an eleven-way World War by complete accident during one Loop. How? He pretended to be a pizza delivery boy and gave Salem one with Pineapple labelled "From Ozpin". He's just left gobsmacked by the entire thing.
  • Bad Acting: As noted by Emerald, when Mercury is trying to Stealth, he acts in a specific way that instantly blows his cover.
  • Bad Liar: Mercury tries to get away with Stealthing only for the other Loopers to catch on immediately.
  • Dramatic Irony: Mercury thinks he can fool the other Loopers into believing he hasn't been activated yet, though the readers know everyone else is well aware of him Looping and have just been convinced not to say anything.
  • Eye Scream: While in a Soul Eater fused loop replacing Free, he complains to Emerald (replacing Eruka) that he doesn't have any cool powers yet in either Baseline or the Loops, so she mistakenly tells him to take Free's Demon Eye. So he went through with it, tearing out the Demon Eye and pocketing it. Every loop he wants to use it though, namely to troll Emerald, he has to tear out his own eye and cram it in there. Emerald says he's apparently had a lot of loops where his legs were just chopped right off, so removing an eye isn't a big deal to him. It's still disturbing to Cinder and Emerald though.
  • Rejection Affection: Platonic variation. Much to Ruby's irritation, Mercury wants no part of her Tangled Family Tree, and repeatedly refuses whenever she asks. Ruby generally either ignores his refusal or acts passive aggressive, saying that even if he refuses he is family to the Remnant Loopers.
  • Spy Speak: For the sheer amount of obliviousness Mercury demonstrates, he is surprisingly quick to catch on to the fact that the other Loopers use codes to identify each other.
  • Stealth Expert: Subverted hard. He Stealths to get a better grasp of the situation, and only occasionally reveals himself to the other Loopers. However, being inexperienced and pretty poor actor leads to everyone immediately figuring it out, they just don't tell Mercury to make him feel better.
  • The Prankster: Rather than his baseline identity as The Sociopath assassin, Mercury's made his looping identity into being an unrepentant troll. Pranks are one of the bigger forms of trolling for him, to the point that after pocketing Free's Demon Eye he largely just uses it to screw with Emerald.
  • Tragic Villain: The other Remnant Loopers universally agree that Mercury really didn't have it easy having Marcus Black as a father, with still debating whether him or Jacques is the worse parent. As such, they've largely agreed to give Mercury what he never had under Marcus: people who care about him, try to heal the damage he's had to endure, and fix what Marcus spent so long breaking.
  • Troll: While he's at first Stealthing so as to get a grasp of the Loops, he eventually decides to do it just to screw with everyone For the Lulz, doing random things to cause mischief or confuse the others, and becoming the basis of his looping identity.

    Others 

The CFVY Machines

In one loop Ruby made Team CFVY aware of the Loops and gave Velvet a tour of her weapons museum. Velvet decided she wanted to live in Ruby's pocket, and her Team joined her in a show of solidarity. Due to the risk of aging if they remained organic however, Ruby used Robotnik's roboticizer to turn them into machines, allowing them functionally immortality and making them residents of Ruby's Pocket. Gave their lives to save the Remnant loop during the "Tale of the Two Sisters" disaster.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: They were initially just Team CFVY from a variant loop, but after being roboticized and moving into Ruby's pocket, they slowly began becoming their own beings and developed their own identities. They eventually became so independent of their origin that, after their Heroic Sacrifice and the events of RWBY: After the Fall were solidified, Ruby requested that should Team CFVY ever start looping, they don't get the memories of the CFVY machines, as the CFVY Machines were their own beings at that point, and Team CFVY shouldn't be forced to shoulder their identities.
  • Do Not Go Gentle: Upon discovering that they had, in fact, been suffering from a degenerative memory loss, they took the opportunity to join in defending their reality from ending permanently during the "Tale of Two Sisters" disaster. Because they aren't actually looping however, it's pointed out that if they can't return to Ruby's pocket before the Loop ends, they will die with the rest of the Loop. This doesn't change their decision though.
    Velvet: I asked you, long ago, to let me live by my own terms. Now I'm asking you let us die by our own terms.
    Fox: As warriors and heroes.
    Yatsuhashi: As defenders of Remnant.
    Coco: ...As Huntsmen and Huntresses.
  • The Fog of Ages: While their bodies are functionally immortal, their memories aren't. After living for so long their minds began failing, causing them to forget things regularly. Ruby tried endlessly to figure out how to fix them, but couldn't.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: They personally man several of Ruby's ships and weaponry while fighting against Cinder's forces during her Ascension attempt, doing so until the loop's end. Because they aren't Looping however, once the Loop ended they were Killed Off for Real.

Chibi-Salem

Originally a division of Chibi-Ruby's possessed by a variant of Salem after she tried to take over Ruby's body post-mortem, Chibi-Salem is the conglomeration of "The Sisters", a group of Chibi-Ruby's that take on her negative emotions.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: While originally just all of Ruby's negative emotions being compartmentalized, after the Split-Personality Merge she tends to represent Ruby's negative side, and tries to make her confront said aspects so as to not fall into a breakdown. Weiss compares her to a pressure valve to allow Ruby to more healthily deal with her frustrations without going overboard.
  • Demonic Possession: Originally she was simply the Chibi-Ruby's a variant of Salem managed to possess, though this eventually ended.
  • Literal Split Personality: While they were originally just Salem-possessed-Chibi Ruby's, they later became a series of Chibi's that took on Ruby's negative emotions to spare her emotional pain. As they are still Chibi-Ruby's however, they can seperate from Ruby herself and manifest as a larger Chibi of their own.
  • Palette Swap: The Chibi-Salem's retain the physical appearance of Ruby, but take on Salem's black, white, and red color.
  • Poke the Poodle: The Chibi-Salem's regularly declare they still intend to make Ruby suffer and conquer Remnant, but most of their actions are just annoying pranks due to retaining parts of Ruby's personality.
  • Split-Personality Merge: After Ruby's break with Penny, Chibi-Salem asks to recombine with her so they can all get back with Penny, simultaneously allowing Ruby to realize that compartmentalizing her negative emotions into her is not healthy. So she reabsorbs Chibi-Salem into herself, the Chibi's comprising her returning to normal. That being said, she's existed long enough that she's effectively her own personality, so she still exists to some extent, just in Ruby's head mainly, and she doesn't come out as often anymore.

Whitley Schnee

Weiss' younger brother revealed by the Volume 4 expansions. While unanimously considered a smug brat, the Remnant Loopers agree he's largely a product of Jacques' abuse, and tend to try and get him away from Jacques' influence whenever they can.
  • Freudian Excuse: The Loopers all acknowledge that Whitley's behavior is largely thanks to Jacques, and as such, treat the kid very sympathetically. More often than not, Weiss tries to get him away from the Schnee manor so he can finally break free. A Running Gag is that Raven does this by kidnapping him, but its just as often that Oscar or Ruby will befriend him too.
  • Not Blood Siblings: Played with. Raven considers Whitley her adopted son after kidnapping him so many times. Problem for her is, in many loops where she does this, he ends up getting a crush on Vernal, who she considers her adopted daughter. So while it isn't incest from Whitley's perspective, it is from Raven's.
  • Stockholm Syndrome: A rare positive example. It's a Running Gag at this point that if Raven is Awake, she will kidnap Whitley. While at first it was just to screw over Jacques and later to prove she's a better parent than him, she eventually became attached to Whitley and considers him an adopted son. More often than not, while Whitley will resist at first, he eventually comes around to liking the Branwen tribe and stays willingly.

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