Darth Wiki / RWBY Knight

RWBY Knight is a RWBY fanfic with crossover elements from The DCU, primarily the Batman: Arkham Series and the Arrowverse, written by STARCRUSHER99. In it, the events of canon are pushed back one year - but in their first year, Team JNPR was on a mission to a village outside of the Kingdom before it went horribly wrong and Jaune was forced to sacrifice his life to ensure the others escaped. It's been nine months and the students are just beginning to move on when a mysterious figure calling himself the Arkham Knight begins targeting them for "revenge" for something they didn't do.

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This work contains examples of:

• Accidental Murder: The only person that Jaune genuinely doesn't intend to kill is Qrow; he only intends to get him away from his nieces and get the gun out of his hand. Unfortunately, thanks to Qrow's Semblance, the tackle goes wrong and Qrow falls off the side of the building.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • All of the Militia's gear is specifically made out of non-magnetic metals so that Pyrrha's polarity Semblance can't affect it.
  • For all that Jaune's Semblance gives him access to dozens of powers, there's one crucial flaw: he can't use more than one at a time. The only thing that stops his Semblance from being downright useless in one-on-one combat is that he's smart enough to find ways around his limitations and quickly becomes accustomed to switching between Semblances at a moment's notice. This also means that if he can be disarmed, his offensive capability is severely weakened (since he can't punch through Auras as easily), which ends up being his undoing.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: The canon Man-Bat was Kirk Langstrom, who only wanted to cure his deafness and is absolutely devastated to learn he killed his wife in the process. Here, it's Dr. Merlot, who considers his new form a drastic upgrade and can't wait to turn back to cause more chaos.
• Adaptational Badass: Thanks to his Semblance, Jaune goes from the weakest person in the cast to easily the physically strongest character in the setting. Even when he's forced into hand-to-hand, he's able to stand up to Pyrrha, Yang, and Blake all at once.
• Adaptational Consent: For all that they're absolute psychopaths whenever they're together, Joker's relationships with Harley Quinn and Punchline are both technically consensual (Harley is definitely a gray area since he corrupted her to begin with, but it's never treated as outright rape). Here, the only reason Harley and Punchline love him is because of the blood he poisoned them with, and his relationship with them is outright referred to as rape.
• Adaptational Context Change:
  • With Mr. Freeze and Nora being changed to Ironwood and Winter respectively, the reason behind Mr. Freeze's villainy isn't out of love for Winter, it's out of a desperate need to not fail his most prized Specialist as her superior officer after having put her in danger in the first place.
  • Both the Batsuit and the Batmobile (the Paladin Car) were originally designed for military usage - the Batsuit was a stealth suit while the Paladin Car was designed to be both an offensive and defensive ground vehicle that could actually be piloted. This design also changes why the Militia are unprepared for them; in the game, it's because Jason's in-depth information was three years out of date, while here, it's because only Pietro, their creator, knows that they exist in the first place.
  • In RWBY, the Fall of Vale began when Cinder stoked tensions during the Vytal Festival and culminated it by revealing Penny's robotic nature to the world. Here, the fear attack on the diner and Scarecrow's resulting announcement causes so much panic in the Kingdom that Grimm start attacking the walls, forcing the Huntsmen to guard the walls and ignore what's happening inside. This also changes the context behind the Grimm Dragon's awakening, as it only gets woken up when the Cloudburst goes off.
  • In Arkham Knight, Pyg's serial killings were the result of trying to make people into his perfect Dollotrons, with the deceased being those he couldn't "fix". Here, it has an added racist element, as Merlot's Grimm experiments had no results on Faunus and so he's attempting to turn the Faunus into humans via cutting off their animal parts, with the deceased simply being the ones who died in the process.
  • In the game, Firefly attacked the fire stations in the hopes that he could burn them to the ground out of pure pyromania. Here, Cinder attacks the fire stations as a strategic move, since it cripples the fire department and ensures they can't respond to events like the ACE Chemicals explosion.
  • It's easy to miss in the game, but random militia chatter states that they were only given a two-minute warning to escape the Cloudburst's blast. Here, because Adam is in charge of giving it, there's no warning at all, so about half of the Militia are caught in the blast.
  • In the game, Scarecrow wanted to unmask Batman because he wanted to destroy the hero's legend and destroy Gotham's hope; he explicitly doesn't care who's under the mask because it could be anyone as far as he cares. Here, Cinder knows Batwoman's identity from the beginning, and she unmasks her because a world-famous Mistralian protecting Vale using illegal Atlesian spy technology will turn the Kingdoms against each other.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Punchline surfaces while Harley is still with the Joker rather than long afterwards.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Mercury ends up having far more of a moral code than his canon counterpart; though he's still an assassin, it's largely because he needs the money to keep Emerald safe, and he abandons Cinder long before the gas attack.
  • Ambrosius in canon only cares for something that can stroke his creative mind and screws over Team RWBY's plan by taking a turn of phrase literally, leading to them, Jaune, and a lot of evacuees not making it out of the Central Location. Here, like Jinn, his primary goal is to aid humanity, so he's willing to tweak Watts's request for a weapon that will "make them go away" by sending them to the Ever After instead of killing them.
• Adaptational Intelligence:
  • In canon, Cinder's plan for the attack on Beacon was brilliant, but everything that occurred after that showed it was basically a fluke and that at her core, she tends to be a prideful idiot. Here, her attack on Vale goes flawlessly despite setback after setback and she constantly plays Xanatos Speed Chess to get the results she wants, and she only loses after she's already gotten everything she wanted and had nothing to lose; in particular, realizing that she can't take Ozpin on directly, she manipulates the situation so that he willingly submits to her.
  • Henry Adams in the game managed to manipulate Batman and Robin rather easily, but here he goes even further by managing to stay in control of the situation in the movie studios when he's dealing with an entire Huntsman team by taking advantage of the Freeze weaponry lying around the room.
• Adaptational Sympathy:
  • Compared to both RWBY and Batman: Arkham Knight, Cinder/Scarecrow is played for far more sympathy here. Being exposed to a prototype fear toxin gave her traumatic flashbacks to her horrible past with the Madame, driving her mad with fear and locking her into a childlike mentality. Releasing the fear toxin isn't just to cause the Fall of Vale, it's a desperate attempt to make everyone understand the fear she's felt her entire life.
  • In the comics, Punchline is shown to be as utterly monstrous as the Joker, lacking any kind of sympathetic qualities even before she went mad. Here, Velvet only goes as insane as she does because of her infection thanks to the Joker's tainted blood and it's made clear several times that she's not in control of her actions; every time the infection is suppressed, she expresses pure horror for everything she's done and thought.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Both Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight are worse than in the game. In the game, they gave Gotham a chance to evacuate first (albeit because the bomb was big enough for it to not matter), which kept everyone but the thugs out of harm's way as the rest of the attack raged on. Here, the warning doesn't give the civilians time to evacuate, and is only done so that the resulting fear causes a Grimm attack that keeps Vale's Huntsman population on the walls. It also means that all of their actions taken from the game are done with millions of innocent lives in the balance.
  • Jacques Schnee, the fic's equivalent of Simon Stagg, goes even further than Stagg did by purposefully testing the fear toxin on a child.
  • Though Emerald is a part of Cinder's faction for the first eight volumes, she's easily the most conflicted of the group and eventually turns good. Here, on Cinder's orders, Emerald took part in the torture that turned Jaune into the Arkham Knight by breaking his mind and making him think the torture lasted longer than it did.
  • In the game, Jason ultimately can't bring himself to kill Batman once their fight is over and willingly puts down his gun, running away rather than continue the fight. Here, the fight goes on even longer because Jaune absolutely refuses to let go of his grudge or listen to reason, and it doesn't stop until Taiyang is able to knock him out. Even when he's arrested, he's ready to kill everyone around him if he has the chance until Watts and Pyrrha tell him the truth about Tyrian.
  • As mentally unbalanced as he is, the game's Professor Pyg genuinely thought he was somehow helping humanity by creating the Dollotrons and, thanks to his schizophrenic break, literally couldn't understand that he was doing anything wrong. His equivalent here, Dr. Merlot, is not only completely sane and thus fully comprehends his actions, but he fully admits that he's doing them for his own selfish gain, and they even add a racist element to them since his serial killings only target Faunus.
  • In The Flash (2014), the Thinker's ultimate endgame of "reducing humanity's intelligence so that he can rule over the rest of it" is not portrayed as particularly threatening to civilization and was done in an attempt to reduce humanity's reliance on technology. Here, Watts uses the Enlightenment to make himself the smartest person alive and live out his narcissistic fantasies, and he shows no hesitation when he's reminded that the threat of the Grimm could lead to humanity's extinction if his plan worked.
  • Joker's relationships with both Harley Quinn and Punchline are shown in a far worse light since they are both victims of his infected blood scheme and thus have had their personalities overridden. It's outright referred to as rape several times.
• Adaptational Wimp: In Arkham Knight, while the Militia is eventually defeated, they're able to effectively hold Gotham hostage for the entire night and prove a strong resistance against Batman's attempts to liberate the city. Here, their command structure gets taken out early on, the Founders district (their home base) is accessible to the Paladin Car before midnight, and Adam's abysmal leadership once the Knight is gone drives them into the ground.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • In Arkham Knight, because Batman is the only person fighting all the threats, they all get taken out one at a time and rarely crossover with each other. Here, with more heroes taking on the supervillains, the events all take place simultaneously, meaning that they also directly affect each other far more; in particular, Blake being freed from Watts's death game allows her to join the fight against the Arkham Knight. This also means that the characters step in and out of the main plot and side missions multiple times over the course of the night, rather than one person leading the charge the entire time.
  • The Cloudburst in the game only needed to be destroyed for the gas cloud to dissipate and the threat to be defeated. Here, the gas cloud isn't the only issue; it also awakens the Grimm Dragon, so the heroes have to split into two groups to track down and destroy the Cloudburst while others take on the Dragon.
• Adapted Out:
  • Several of Batman's Rogues Gallery simply don't transfer over to established RWBY characters, meaning that there are no equivalents of Mad Hatter, Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins, Hush, or Deacon Blackfire.
  • Ilia gains Poison Ivy's control over plants, but she does not have the hypnotic pheromones Ivy has. She makes up for it by maintaining her combat skills, meaning she has little use for brainwashed servants anyway.
• And the Adventure Continues: The story ends with the Justice League being visited by Oscar, who reveals the secret of Ozpin's immortality and asks if they're ready to take the fight to Salem while she's still weak.
• Anti-Hero: After getting his mind back, Jaune as the Red Hood is firmly on the side of good but is willing to cross the moral lines no one else is willing to cross, especially when it comes to killing his enemies; most of the heroes want the villains to face justice, but Red Hood just wants them out of the picture for good.
• Anti-Villain:
  • The loss of Sun combined with effectively being left out to dry on the night of Scarecrow's attack leave Blake just as disillusioned with the law as she is with the White Fang. As a result, she now prefers to go solo, usually by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Ren and Yang believe she'll eventually come back to the light, but while Blake misses her friends, she has no intention of ever serving their cause any time soon.
  • Ironwood effectively destroys the Atlas military, but he's a desperate man attempting to save Winter's life so that he can prove he's done at least one thing right since the Arkham Knight surfaced. Once Winter wakes up and makes it clear that she'd rather die than have anyone else suffer by his hands for her sake, he's overcome with guilt over all he caused.
  • As in canon, Hazel Rainart/Bane may be working for Salem, but he has good intentions underneath it, genuinely believing that he's creating a better world and doing what he can to limit the casualties of his actions. Even after he becomes a supervillain and escapes during the breakout, he largely goes from town to town helping out wherever he can, and only attacks the heroes when they prevent him from getting his Venom dosage.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: As a result of using Tyrian's Semblance, Jaune's attacks are all able to pierce his opponents' Aura.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • When Jaune advocates leaving Hazel and Mercury out of prison, Yang incredulously asks why he's making exceptions for them. After he points out the pragmatic benefits of leaving them alive, he concludes by asking her where her priorities lie:
    Jaune: What do you care about more, protecting the innocent or punishing the guilty?
  • While they're trapped in the Ever After, Blake and Mercury go on self-serving rants to justify their crimes. Hazel finally breaks them down with a simple question: if they so desperately want to escape their criminal lives, why are they so determined to get back to Remnant, where they seemingly have no escape? It finally makes Blake realize her selfishness and Mercury realize how much he cares for Emerald.
• Ascended Extra:
  • In Arkham Knight, Catwoman was ultimately a side character whose own story didn't pick up until the night after the main game. Here, she proves crucial to the Arkham Knight's defeat.
  • Ilia gets a massive upgrade in importance from the show, with her own dedicated character arc showing her coming to relate to plant life over humans and Faunus only to come to their aid once more against Scarecrow.
  • Taiyang gets involved in the action personally and plays several crucial roles throughout the story, most notably taking Commissioner Gordon's role in several places.
• Asshole Victim: Subverted. Team CRDL are all asshole bullies as usual, but the characters and narrative make it clear that they did not deserve to die, much less in the horrific manner that they did. Jaune in particular considers it his "original sin" once he comes back to himself and never forgives himself for it.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Using the Relic of Creation to levitate Atlas into the air is a jaw-dropping spectacle, but all it takes is the wrong person getting access to a Maiden's powers to send it crashing straight back to Remnant. The moment that the group realizes Watts intends to take the Relic of Creation while Penny is the Winter Maiden, it doesn't become a question of if Atlas and Mantle will be destroyed, it's a question of when.
• Back from the Dead: Sun's corpse is taken by the Arkham Knight and dropped in the Grimm pool, turning him into an inhuman zombie.
• Badass Driver:
  • Yang is a beast when she's driving Bumblebee, able to take on all of Watts's racetracks with minimal effort even when one of them flips her upside down.
  • Ren slowly gets more and more confident in his abilities with the Car over the course of the gas attack, to the point that by the end, taking on an army of tank drones comes down to him.
• Bad Boss: Just like in the show, Adam has no consideration for the lives of his soldiers. His soldiers note his tendency to fly into murderous rages against his own men for slight missteps, and even though he's given advance notice of when the Cloudburst is going to go off, he prioritizes stationing the checkpoints and watchtowers over getting his men to safety, which leads to dozens of them being caught in the blast.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In the end, Cinder gets everything she wants; she spreads her fear toxin across the entire Kingdom, forces millions of people to feel the fear she felt in her childhood, proves herself more of a threat than Salem, publicly executes Ozpin, and causes international tensions by unmasking Pyrrha as Vale's protector. She doesn't intend to be gassed with a dose of toxin strong enough to render her catatonic, but by that point she's already won, and Vale is still recovering from her actions a year later.
• Benevolent Boss: Ironically, considering his habit of killing those who displease him, the Arkham Knight is rather kind to soldiers who follow his orders correctly. It's mentioned that many of the Militia are so loyal to him because he reached out to them directly and related to them on a personal level, giving them a place to belong despite their pasts. Even the Vale branch of the White Fang is more willing to follow him than they are Adam or Roman since while he may kill people who fail him, he at least won't kill people on a whim.
• Big Bad: Everything that happens in the story ties back to Tyrian. His torture of Jaune turned him into the Arkham Knight, which leads to the creation of over a dozen other supervillains, his scheme with the poisoned blood threatens the entire kingdom of Vale well before the gas attack, and even after the attack, his mass breakout of the supervillains leads to the entire last third of the plot. Notably, he's the final villain Jaune has to face before his redemption is completed.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Salem starts the story as the biggest threat besides the Knight himself, as she's directly in charge of her cabal and seeks to destroy Remnant. The rise of supervillains gradually reduces her threat level as more and more of her forces end up going rogue, and soon enough, she's the absolute last thing anyone is worried about. By the end, while she's still on the loose, she's gained no ground on Ozpin, and with the world now aware of her existence, humanity is more than ready to go on the offensive.
• Big Damn Heroes: As the Grimm Dragon comes close to the wall, Ironwood comes back from his barge and attacks the Dragon with his freezing weapons, which damages it for the first time. From there, he leads the charge against the beast and manages to take it down.
• Bittersweet Ending: With a heavy emphasis on the "bitter". Ultimately, Jaune, Nora, Sun, Neptune, Ilia, Ironwood, Winter, Glynda, Qrow, and countless innocents are all dead or dying, Blake has become disillusioned with both sides of the law and is now striking out on her own, Jaune is Barred from the Afterlife so he can guide his friends from purgatory, Atlas and Mantle have both been destroyed, and Salem isn't defeated permanently, so she's going to strike back at some point. However, Jaune completes his redemption by killing or otherwise permanently defeating all the supervillains he's responsible for creating, Vale is recovering within the year, and heroes like Ren, Weiss, Ruby, and Yang continue to patrol the city, so it will be protected for the future.
• Book Ends: Jaune's story ends at the same place it began: at the tree Pyrrha speared him to during Initiation.
• Boring, but Practical: Ozpin notes that the Batsuit's ability to project the user's Scroll from its gauntlet only saves them a few seconds at best, but as Pietro points out, in a dangerous situation, a few seconds like that can mean the difference between life and death; plus, it's a lot harder to break the gauntlet than a Scroll.
• Break the Cutie: Marrow begins the story as an upbeat newcomer to the Atlas Military, and this maintains itself despite his hardships until the events at Arkham Asylum. By the end of the night, he's heavily traumatized and far more cynical.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Ironwood originally refuses Weiss's pleas to come back to the fold, arguing that he's proven himself too untrustworthy to help against Scarecrow. Winter evidently gets him to change his mind, as the both of them come back to fight the Grimm Dragon just when all hope seems lost.
• Chekhov's Gun: An offhand joke early on in the attack reveals that the gears inside Ozpin's office are the answer to one of Watts's riddles. It's later revealed that this was a key piece of information to deducing the Arkham Knight's identity, as the office's design is not public knowledge and thus someone who had once been in there had to have told him about it.
• Closest Thing We Got: The Cloudburst going off fries the Paladin Car's engine, but because of the gas cloud, the only person who can go in to fix it is Ren, whose Semblance minimizes the effects of the fear toxin. This leaves him as the only person able to take on the Knight's drones and Cloudburst tank while everyone else focuses on taking down the Grimm Dragon.
• Composite Character: Several characters take inspiration from different characters from multiple source materials.
  • Cinder takes the Scarecrow's name and MO but is also the one who targets the fire stations the night of the gas attack.
  • Dr. Watts draws elements from his own canon self, the Riddler from Arkham Knight, and the Thinker from The Flash (2014). Notably, he's far more unsympathetic and dangerous than either of them.
  • Mercury combines both Deadshot and Deathstroke, taking the former's arrogance and sharpshooting with the latter's tactical brilliance and combat ability.
  • Dr. Merlot is the creator of Scarecrow's fear toxin, the scientist who turns himself into a bat-like abomination, and the serial killer who creates the Dollotrons.
  • Taiyang takes parts from two iterations of the same character: the Commissioner Gordons seen in both Arkham Knight and The Dark Knight.
  • When Roman Torchwick upgrades to supervillain status, he takes the name and physical style of Black Mask with the operating style of the Penguin.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Filling both his canon role and Simon Stagg's, Jacques Schnee's morals are as bankrupt as his riches are plentiful. He willingly allies with Scarecrow in an attempt to break into the weapons industry for further profits, even though he's already the richest man on the planet, and provides the test subjects for her fear toxin from his own mines.
• Crippling Overspecialization: For all that the Arkham Knight's Semblance makes him an almost unstoppable foe, it's literally the only real weapon in his arsenal; without it, he's a barely trained kid in over his head. Once his Aura is locked again, he can barely put up a fight.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Arkham Knight is horrifically fond of dishing these out.
  • In the first chapter, he freezes Russel Thrush completely solid in a manner that leaves his Aura behind despite his death, quickly kills Sky and Dove, then crucifies Cardin before slicing open his stomach so his insides spill onto the floor.
  • After employing some cruel irony by breaking Nora's legs, the Knight grabs her hammer and smashes her head with it. She's clearly choking on blood as she dies.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Two days after Scarecrow's attack, Pyrrha is called into a meeting of the various Kingdoms' Councils to discuss her status as Batwoman. It soon becomes clear that it's really about each government trying to take credit for her heroics that night, which eventually makes her snap, call out everyone in the room on live television, and storm out declaring her intent to work solo - and if they want to stop her, they'll have to send someone stronger than Scarecrow to do it.
• Death by Adaptation: The Arkham Knight quickly racks up a kill count of people the source material spared.
  • Team CRDL is killed by the Arkham Knight in the first chapter.
  • Sun is killed at the White Fang recruitment rally, though he's resurrected as a zombie.
  • Glynda is killed as part of the gambit to get Roman out of prison, while Nora is murdered by the Knight in an unrelated attack the same night.
  • Aaron Cash is killed on the night of the Arkham Asylum breakout.
  • Winter dies from her gunshot wound during the time skip after the gas attack.
• Decomposite Character: Since different characters all share Batman's role of leading the fight against the supervillains, the ones who get dosed with fear toxin all see Jaune taunting him like he saw Joker in the game. All of them see a different facet of Batman's original fears:
  • Pyrrha sees Jaune taunting her about supposedly leaving him to die, suggesting that her attempts to get through the night without killing anyone are doomed to fail.
  • Ren sees Jaune tormenting him for all the friends he failed to save - first Jaune, then Nora, and now Ruby.
  • Velvet sees Jaune taunting her about the torture he endured at Tyrian's hand, suggesting that she's doomed to become just as psychotic as Tyrian due to his blood running through her veins.
• Dies Different In Adaptation:
  • Fria peacefully passes away shortly after Ironwood goes off the deep end rather than making it to the end of Volume 7.
  • In the show, Ozpin is killed by Cinder in a straight-up fight in Beacon's vault. Here, Cinder still kills him, but it's a public execution instead of an isolated fight to the death.
  • In the show, Roman is eaten alive by a Griffon during a fight with Ruby in the Fall of Beacon. Here, he's in a Bullhead when Qrow murders the pilot and he's killed in the crash.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Cinder's fear toxin showed Watts a vision of his former peers calling him "average". In response to this, he initiates a scheme that leads to the deaths of dozens of innocent people, destroys Atlas and Mantle, and almost endangers the entire world, all to prove that he's smarter than the people in his vision thought.
  Yang: You're saying that he's willing to let everyone get eaten by Grimm because he had a nightmare of what people might say about him?
  Jaune: There's a reason none of Salem's little helpers ever liked him.
• The Dreaded: Jaune is absolutely terrified of Tyrian even before he becomes the Joker, but once he does, everyone in Vale shares his fear.
  Jaune: Tyrian has the skill, the knowledge, and the desire to feed everyone on Remnant to Grimm so that he can dance on the bones. Of course I'm afraid of him. If you're smart, you would be too.
• Enemy Mine: Once all the supervillains get loose at once, Weiss sees no choice but to release Jaune from his cell. Luckily, Jaune is willing to help, but his relationship with the others remains understandably frosty.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He refuses to admit it out loud, but Mercury cares a great deal for Emerald. Cinder effectively destroying her brain is what made him go rogue in the first place, and most of the money from his job goes towards keeping her alive and safe.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Arkham Knight:
    • Even the Knight is unnerved by the concept of fear toxin when it's first introduced to him, but Cinder gets him to come around eventually.
    • While he kidnaps Ruby in order to send her team into chaos, he can't bring himself to actually harm her. He threatens Cinder to get her away from her and tells the White Fang that if anyone touches her, he'll kill them on the spot.
    • The Knight is willing to kill his men if they fail him, but he's not sadistic about it and genuinely cares for the ones that serve him well. He's thus disgusted by how Adam can disregard his people's lives, especially when Adam leaves them to be caught in the gas attack.
  • Though the Red Hood is unscrupulous when it comes to killing anyone in his way, when it comes to Qrow, he recognizes his role in turning Qrow to villainy and instead tries to talk him down. He only resorts to violence when there's no longer a choice, and though Qrow does die in the scuffle, it's genuinely an accident.
  • Jacques notes that for all Cinder is absolutely obsessed with causing fear in others through her new toxin, she reacts horribly when he provides her with a seven-year-old boy to test it on. A later glimpse into her psyche shows that it was specifically the image of a child in chains that brought back bad memories for her, and while she doesn't stop Jacques from testing it on the child himself, she refuses to do it.
  • The Arkham Knight's brutality is so horrible that most of the underworld wants absolutely nothing to do with him, even tangentially; in particular, once Qrow's injuries become public, he becomes a black mark on the underworld. Most of Roman's men flee his service when they learn he works with the Knight, and Junior even refuses to loan him his men under the threat of death.
  • A lot of the Militia are disgusted with Jacques' greed, taking particular umbrage with his willingness to help gas an entire Kingdom just to get a little more profit when he's already the richest man in history.
    Militia 1: Fucking psycho... gassing an entire Kingdom just to make a quick buck.
    Militia 2: Uh, hate to break it to you, but we're gassing an entire Kingdom to make a quick buck.
    Militia 1: News flash, we're not already set for life!
  • Several of the Militia are also disgusted with their own actions after the Cloudburst wakes up the Grimm Dragon and almost kills everyone in Vale. Some state that they intend to retire back to menial jobs once the night is through in hopes of never doing something like this again.
  • It's noted that after the mass breakout, most of the other supervillains refused to associate with or help Watts in any way, viewing his entire scheme as too dangerous and pointless. Jaune dryly points out that even among Salem's cabal, all of whom were perfectly fine demolishing entire Kingdoms, Watts was a pariah for his sadistic pettiness.
  • Ilia becomes a rogue bio-terrorist once she unlocks her Semblance, but even she thought that Scarecrow and the Knight's vendetta was way too destructive and dangerous to participate in.
  • Jaune's plan to bring Sun's dead body back as a zombie through the Grimm pits is so disgusting that Roman outright refuses to take part in it. Neo does help him, but she privately thinks to herself that even a sadist like her prefers it when her victims stay dead once she's done with them.
  • Hazel shows genuine remorse when he realizes the torture Jaune endured at Tyrian's hands, particularly the fact that Hazel was inside the castle at the time and didn't realize what was happening. He tells Jaune that if he had known about it, he would've gone against Salem to free him, and while Jaune does point out that it's a worthless platitude now, he does admit that he believes him and thanks him for the sentiment anyway.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As selfish as Blake acts during Scarecrow's attack, she feels incredibly guilty when she and Yang are led to believe that Ruby died while Yang was focused on saving her.
  • When Weiss learns that Jacques not only helped Scarecrow with the Cloudburst but personally tested the fear toxin on a child, she completely abdicates her role in the SDC because she can't stomach the thought of working for an organization that perpetuated such a horrid crime. It's later noted that when Whitley took over the company and made a speech disavowing Jacques' actions, he became so overwhelmed by the list of crimes that he started crying.
  • Taiyang is willing to betray Pyrrha to Scarecrow if it means getting Ruby back, but he can't go through with it once Yang enters the fray. As much as he wants Ruby back, he refuses to hurt his other daughter to do it.
• Evil Is Petty: Watts's defining trait is his pettiness:
  • Yang happened to foil Watts's first death trap by complete accident because she happened to be the one to investigate it. Watts is so incensed by the idea of an "irrelevant bimbo" like her outsmarting him that he then dedicates the rest of his supervillain career to spiting her specifically, including arranging Blake's kidnapping within an hour or so just to draw Yang out.
  • Just to kick Yang while she's already down, he broadcasts the group's comms while they discuss Ruby's supposed death, knowing full well she can do nothing about it due to being locked in his game.
  • It's noted that Watts somehow managed to get one of his trophies into Beacon's vault and that he made a point to not provide Cinder with any info that could help her gain the Maiden's powers. Notably, Cinder already had different goals than finding the Maiden, so the only person who even knows that he did it is Watts himself.
• Exact Words: PRN take it very personally when the Knight lists one of their crimes as "leaving your leader to die", as although they know Jaune willingly stayed behind, they believe the claim to be Metaphorically True. As it turns out, Jaune is being literal when he says that - his memories have been tampered with and he believes that Pyrrha actively left him to die during the attack.
• Face Death with Dignity: In the end, Velvet asks Jaune to kill her with a disturbing degree of calm, only asking that her parents not be informed of the horrible crimes she committed while infected.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Neptune is slowly driven mad by a combination of grief for Sun's death, Roman's Semblance corrupting his intentions, and Salem's corruption through the Knight infecting his Aura. It eventually drives him to throw his lot in with the Knight, even though the Knight killed Sun in the first place.
  • By the end, Blake has been thoroughly disillusioned with Huntsmen after seeing Ozpin's system up close and gives up on serving the law entirely. She now serves as a cat burglar who sometimes helps out if it benefits her, though Ren and Yang believe she'll see the light again one day.
• Failure Hero: As in canon, Ironwood's best attempts to help only end up ruining everything. Winter is shot and rendered comatose on his watch, he fails to save Glynda from the Joker, and when he goes rogue to save Winter, he ends up destroying a large chunk of the Atlas infrastructure. The result is complete anarchy within the military that lasts for months and means that Atlas can't provide meaningful help against the gas attack, and by the end he's only remembered as the supervillain that ensured Atlas's destruction.
• Fallen Hero: At the beginning of the story, Qrow is one of Ozpin's most trusted lieutenants and advisors. By the end, the traumas he endures leave him a wandering criminal no better than many of the supervillains, so deranged in his quest for revenge that he almost kills his own nieces.
• Fate Worse than Death: Watts extracting Emerald's Semblance causes it to backfire against herself, leaving her in a permanent state of vivid hallucinatory nightmares she can never escape. It takes Jaune getting aggressive with her own Semblance against her to even begin to snap her out of it.
• Foregone Conclusion: Each chapter opens with an excerpt from an In-Universe book written by Weiss, all of which give some hints as to what will happen.
  • Obviously, for the book to exist, Weiss will survive the story's events.
  • The first chapter mentions that Mr. Freeze, the Scarecrow, and the Joker are three of the most known supervillains of the era, so they're going to have their rises and falls. Conversely, Watts's plan is mentioned to have failed, so the Enlightenment will be stopped.
  • Pyrrha is identified as Batwoman in the first chapter, meaning that she becomes a superhero but gets unmasked. Additionally, her polarity Semblance becomes public knowledge.
  • The so-called Age of Heroes only lasts for about a year before the world starts going back to normal.
  • Jaune's identity as the Arkham Knight will be revealed to his former friends and the world at large.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the docks heist, Blake showcases some stunning stealth abilities, managing to take out a large amount of the White Fang present before anyone knows she's there. This affinity for stealth proves vital not just to her later career as a cat burglar, but also to the effort to depower Jaune, as her ability to sneak up on him gives them an opening to wrap an Aura dampener on his neck.
  • In the second chapter, Qrow mentions a past incident where a supposed "Swamp Thing" turned out to just be a guy with a weird Semblance and plant obsession. Ilia later unlocks a Semblance that allows her to control and communicate with plants, which she soon begins to identify with more than human or Faunuskind. Qrow even mentions the similarities when she begins her bio-attacks.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: By the end, the survivors of Jaune's crusade are able to admit that he at least did what he could to fix his mistakes once he came back to his senses, but that doesn't erase all of the atrocities he committed. Ruby is the only one who still misses him after his death; Ren in particular doesn't hate him anymore but has no intention of ever visiting his grave.
• Forgot About His Powers: Subverted. When Neptune comes to his senses as he's dying and Coco later reveals that Yatsu's Semblance undoes mind control powers, Weiss furiously asks him why he neglected to mention that. Yatsu points out that they had no evidence that any kind of mind tampering was in play since as far as they could tell, Neptune had simply gone mad with power.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: The night of the gas attack is told from a multitude of perspectives depending on the chapter. There are a lot of things going on all at once, so the narrative switches between:
  • The main fight against Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, led by Pyrrha and anyone with her at the moment.
  • Yang's battle against the Riddler to free Blake, which crosses to the main story when she liberates the Founders district.
  • Ren patrolling the city for Militia equipment. He frequently has control of the Paladin Car, which inserts him into other stories frequently.
  • Weiss combatting several of the city's supervillains, including Mr. Freeze, Man-Bat, and Black Mask.
  • Taiyang attempting to find Ruby, only to come into conflict with Qrow's gang.
  • Dr. Polendina attempting to cure the Joker-infected, only to be attacked by Neo and require Team CFVY's assistance.
  • Ozpin managing the crises as much as he can from his office while he deduces the Arkham Knight's identity.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Cinder's canon backstory is given even more weight here, as accidentally getting dosed with fear toxin sent her straight back to the horrible treatment she endured as a child slave and drove her mad. Her obsession with fear toxin isn't just to make other people feel her fear, it's to finally conquer her own after being consumed by quivering fear for her entire life.
  • Neo's abuse from her parents combined with her dissociation with her imaginary friend means that she has a crippling fear of abandonment, which is why she latches so hard on to Roman and never leaves his side. Roman's death in a bullhead crash combined with a dose of the fear toxin drives her mad with a desire for love, and this leaves her wide open for Tyrian to latch onto.
• Genius Bruiser: As in canon, Bane/Hazel Rainart. He's not just a tactical foe, he's one of the most dangerous physical threats on the planet, to the point that Jaune's suggestion for dealing with him is to drop him on an island and sink it.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The first thing Roman notices about Jaune when he sees his face is the giant "T" scar on his cheek, which can only mean that he's bad news.
• Green-Eyed Monster: As always, Adam is absolutely obsessed with Blake for running out on him, blaming her for everything he's done and doing everything to make her life miserable. It escalates to the point that he tries to murder Ilia in a misguided attempt to Murder the Hypotenuse.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Sun tells the Knight to kill him in order to save Blake's life.
  • Whitley, Harriet, and Vine give their lives delaying Atlas's descent on to Mantle, saving thousands of lives at the cost of their own.
  • Penny is forced to sacrifice her Aura, and thus her memory and personality, in order to stop Watts's Enlightenment. While her body is left intact, Pietro can't give her any more of his Aura to bring her personality back; luckily, Jaune uses Pietro's Semblance to give up some of his own instead.
• Hero of Another Story: As Scarecrow's attack is underway, Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum and starts a riot that only Marrow is present for, so he spends the entire night putting that down. He ends up coming back to the airship, traumatized and covered in blood, with little explanation. A side-story eventually details the events from the Asylum.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Qrow, of all people, turns out to be a good enough detective to determine what went down in CRDL's murder just from the limited forensic evidence he can gather on the spot, though he does note that the detective role usually falls to Glynda or Ironwood.
  • When he's unmasked as the Rusted Knight, Mercury reveals that he recognized the tale of The Girl Who Fell Through The World was happening as soon as he met Alyx and that he tried his best to keep the story on track so as to avoid a time paradox. When Ruby expresses some shock at his forethought, he points out that just because he's primarily a killing machine doesn't mean he's an idiot - he still heard fairy tales growing up, and even the most basic knowledge of time travel shows that causing a paradox is a bad idea.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Roman begins the story as the undisputed crime lord of Vale, but his alliance with the Knight ends up completely shredding his reputation in the underworld until he's reduced to an independent arms dealer.
• I Choose to Stay: Hazel decides to stay in the Ever After when everyone else is ready to leave, believing that he's caused too much harm to Remnant to be able to return and that in the new world, he can protect and guide anyone who may need it rather than destroy.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Neptune accidentally gives himself away as the traitor when he says that Ruby went to the airship to take down Roman. As Weiss quickly puts together, not only had Weiss not yet told anyone that Ruby was going to the airship, but no one knew for a fact that Roman was on it, since Ruby was actually going there to shut down the drones.
• Insane Troll Logic: Watts intends to "prove" that he's the smartest person alive by forcibly reducing everyone else on Remnant's intelligence to that of a caveman, making him the only intelligent person alive.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Cinder still kills Ozpin, though the circumstances change it from a fight to the death to an execution.
  • Despite the drastic changes to the evening, Blake still abandons Yang after Cinder's attack winds down. Unlike canon, however, she does leave a note to explain her reasoning, and it's indicated that she's willing to come back if Yang truly needs her.
  • Team RWBY and Jaune still end up in the Ever After thanks to Ambrosius tweaking Watts's request for "something to get rid of them". Jaune even ends up in the Jungle Acre and meets the mouse who takes the name Little.
  • The Rusted Knight still comes into existence to close the Stable Time Loop from canon, only it's Mercury instead of Jaune.
• Internal Reveal: Jaune doesn't learn that Tyrian is one of Salem's loyalists until after he's already been arrested.
• It's Personal: At first, Yang regards Watts's hatred for her with humor, finding it funny just how obsessed he is to prove he's smarter than one of Beacon's dumber first years. Once she finds out that he kept her so occupied that she didn't know about Ruby's capture until she had apparently died, the rivalry becomes personal on both sides, and in their final battle that night, Blake has to stop her from murdering Watts outright.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Jaune being willing to kill the other supervillains is explicitly called out as immoral, with Pyrrha in particular advocating that they shouldn't be killing anyone. Jaune fires back that the supervillains have already successfully broken out of the most secure prison Remnant has, meaning that there is literally no way to contain them.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Roman originally gets off scot-free for his role in the gas attack due to all the information he gives in his plea bargain, only for Qrow to kill him in a Bullhead accident after the mass breakout six months later.
• Killed Offscreen: Six months after the gas attack, Weiss has come to accept that her sister has to be dead even if she technically has no proof; without her cryo-chamber, she only had about a week to live at the most. She does not know, however, if Ironwood died with her or if he's still out in the world somewhere.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Salem is very careful to ensure the Knight never learns that Tyrian works for her, as she knows he would immediately leave her side if he did. She's right; after his arrest, Jaune refuses to admit to anything he did until Pyrrha and Watts reveal their allegiance, at which point his mind completely breaks.
  • All of Beacon's forces do their damndest to stop Yang from learning about Ruby's capture and supposed death, both because she has her own supervillain to worry about at the time and because it would lead to her charging off against Scarecrow without thinking. Unfortunately for everyone, Watts broadcasts the group's comms while they discuss it, ensuring that she hears it.
  • As Hazel later explains, none of Salem's group knew that Tyrian had Jaune as a prisoner in the castle. He also suggests that this was intentional since Hazel would've gone rogue to save him if he'd known about it.
• Logical Weakness: Jaune's ability to copy Semblances is incredibly powerful, but it is far from omnipotent, and it has several limitations based on Jaune's physical abilities.
  • Jaune can't copy a Semblance unless he physically sees it in action. Anything less than that and his Aura doesn't know how to actually activate it or use it.
  • While he instinctively knows how his various Semblances work, that doesn't mean that he instinctively knows how to use them as well as their owners do. If the Semblance has a secondary function (such as Weiss's summons), if it evolves in the original user after he's already copied it, or if it has an inherent weakness, he has to figure it out on his own.
  • Above all, though he has many different Semblances on tap, they're all used as a result of his Semblance, meaning that he can only use one at a time.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • While Velvet is helping deal with the Joker infected, her own infection starts kicking in, and she begins seeing visions of how Tyrian tortured Jaune; it notably includes seeing Tyrian brand Jaune with the "T" on his cheek, which Velvet doesn't know exists. It's not made clear if it's just a very vivid hallucination or if Joker's blood is somehow genuinely feeding her his memories.
  • After Jaune begins his redemption quest, he begins seeing a vision of Nora egging him on and helping him stay on the right path; it later appears as he's dying, telling him that he can rest. The others dismiss it as a hallucination, but the vision gives him information that he has no way of knowing at the time, and Jaune himself is later tethered to the mortal plane after his own death, so it's never clarified just what it is.
• Meaningful Rename: Jaune names himself the Arkham Knight because Arkham was the name of the village he "died" in and he knew it would hurt his former team that much more. After coming back to his senses, he refuses to be called either by his name or by the Arkham Knight because of the shame both names bring him, so he takes the name Red Hood instead.
• Mercy Kill: Red Hood ends up executing Velvet on her own wishes once it becomes clear that there's no way to permanently fight off the Joker's blood.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Cinder violently reacts when it's suggested that she personally dose a child with fear toxin, but shows no reaction whatsoever when she's reminded that she intends to gas a Kingdom where thousands of children live. It's the personal image of hurting a child that affects her - when she can distance herself from it, she's not affected by it.
• Mind Rape: Part of Tyrian's torture of Jaune was having Emerald use her Semblance on him to make him hallucinate even more tortures happening, which completely destroyed his sense of time.
• Mission Control: Ozpin serves as the coordinator for all the heroic forces on the night of the gas attack. As he points out, while he'd love to be in the field, he's the only man who knows how to effectively control the students, politicians, army, and Huntsmen, meaning he's the only choice for a field coordinator.
• The Mole: Neptune serves as an inside man for the Arkham Knight, feeding him information on Beacon, RWBY, and PRN's movements in the weeks leading up to the attack. He gets outed early into the attack and is forced to flee to the Knight's side permanently.
• Morton's Fork:
  • As Pietro details to Ironwood, the Arkham Knight's attack on Winter puts her in the most medically dangerous situation he's ever seen. The bullet put her in a coma but didn't take out her Aura, meaning she's subconsciously keeping it activated and fighting off any attempt to get it out with lethal force - but, if they purposefully remove her Aura, the bullet might end up killing her. The only option the doctors see is to cryogenically freeze her while they try to figure out how to remove the bullet without killing her - Mr. Freeze's crusade then revolves around trying to unfreeze her without her Aura activating and attacking everyone.
  • When the Cloudburst goes off, the Grimm Dragon awakes. Ozpin only has Weiss, Ren, Pyrrha, and the remaining Atlas forces on hand and has to make a choice - if the Grimm Dragon makes it to the wall, then it will deposit Grimm right in the middle of the city, but if the gas cloud stays up, then people will continue to die and raise the negative emotions until nothing is left. Luckily, he's able to split his effort when Ironwood finally rejoins the fray, allowing him to handle the Grimm Dragon while Ozpin handles the Cloudburst.
• Motive Decay: In-Universe, Jaune internally discusses how insane Cinder has become that she's completely lost sight of her previous goals. While she once desired nothing but the Maiden powers, now she's so devoted to spreading the fear toxin as far as she can that she ignores several opportunities to just walk into Beacon and take them.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Adam brings Ilia along on one of his assassination missions purely so he can kill her while she's distracted, all in an attempt to remove her as "competition" for Blake's hand.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Jaune first begins coming back to his senses, he's briefly driven insane from the guilt of everything he did as the Arkham Knight.
• Mythology Gag: There are plenty of moments that are ripped straight out of the source materials.
  • The Arkham Knight's method of murdering Sky Lark is described similarly to a corner takedown from the games (even though, ironically enough, Red Hood is incapable of corner takedowns in-game).
  • Ilia's Catchphrase is "Nature always wins".
  • Pietro notes that the stealth suit he made for the Specialists was jokingly called the "Batsuit" due to the cape design.
  • When Qrow threatens to kill Roman over a coin flip and Roman pleads for his life, Qrow says that telling him the truth "can't hurt your chances", then flips the coin on the Bullhead pilot to ensure he dies anyway.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Dr. Merlot is obsessed with everything related to Grimm and their physiology, having conducted experiments that led to the destruction and slaughter of Mountain Glenn. As a result of these experiments, he discovered the glands and chemicals that allowed him to create a prototype fear toxin, which makes people hallucinate their worst fears.
• Non-Indicative Title: Weiss points out in her book that the so-called "Age of Heroes" only lasted for a bit less than a year.
• Noodle Incident: Qrow mentions that he once investigated reports of a so-called "Swamp Thing" that ended up just being a guy with a weird Semblance and unhealthy love for plants.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Adam claims to the end that he's a freedom fighter fighting on behalf of oppressed Faunus everywhere. Even his own men realize that the only person Adam cares about is himself, as best demonstrated when he lets his own soldiers die in the gas attack, and even Sienna Khan decries him as a "sociopathic mercenary" for taking payment to take part in the attack.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Watts is genuinely mentally unstable, but he plays up just how unhinged he is to make his enemies underestimate him. His supposed breakdowns are actually calculated attempts to throw the heroes off his trail, and by the time everyone realizes he's actually as intelligent as he claims to be, the Enlightenment is already close to completion.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Watts somehow manages to get one of his trophies into the Vault underneath Beacon's campus without Ozpin noticing.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: A rare invoked example; Pietro's stated speciality is Aura and its properties, but the chaos surrounding Ironwood's departure throws a lot of anarchy into the Atlas military, with the only division escaping relatively unscathed being the Specialists. As a result, Pietro is essentially the only remaining scientist, which means he's left working on things like the Batsuit, the Paladin Car, and the Joker infected, all of which are out of his original skillset.
• The Only One: By the night of the Vytal Festival, trying to control the chaos largely comes down to five first year students: Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Pyrrha, and Ren - and that comes down to four when Ruby is captured early on. Ozpin points out that while they may be woefully unprepared for this, they're literally the only option:
  Ozpin: The police somehow missed a terrorist organization hiding in their walls, everyone I trusted is either dead or rogue, the military is in tatters, and the Huntsmen are focusing on stopping the Grimm from breaking down the walls and killing everyone within. Our situation is not exactly optimal, miss Xiao Long.
• Once More, with Clarity: While Ren is patrolling for Militia checkpoints in the Founders district, Yang, who no one has been able to contact for an hour, nearly runs him over with Bumblebee. The next time we see her, we see the brief meeting from her perspective, where we learn she was on the way back to the Orphanage for the next stage of Watts's game.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Scarecrow's attack stresses Ozpin out so severely that he gets unusually blunt with his students, laying out just why damage control has come down to two teams of hilariously unprepared second years.
• Origins Episode: In the end, the story is one long origin story for Ren, showcasing what drives him to abandon the legal methods of justice and take it up as a superhero, in particular the loss of Nora. Notably, Ren is the only person besides Jaune who witnesses the deaths of every supervillain, and it drives him to be a non-lethal crime fighter.
• Papa Wolf: As soon as Taiyang learns that his daughters are being targeted by supervillains, he immediately drops everything, hijacks a Bullhead, sneaks into Vale, and marches straight to Ozpin's office to join the fight. Unfortunately, by the time he arrives, Ruby is kidnapped and Yang is locked in a battle of wits with Watts that no one else can join, leaving him largely on his own to find Ruby.
• Persona Non Grata: Ozpin welcomes Ironwood's help in defeating the Grimm Dragon and securing the other supervillains, but once that's done, he effectively exiles Ironwood from Vale, telling him that his turn to villainy proved him too unstable to ever trust again. By the end of the story, his status is unknown.
• The Peter Principle: In a straight fight, Adam is one of the most dangerous people on Remnant, but as the leader of the Militia after Jaune's arrested, he's absolutely worthless. His checkpoints and watchtowers don't restrict enemy movements, his explosives are planted where the Paladin Car has the advantage in the resulting fights, and his attempts to lead his men through the battles only have him threatening them rather than trying to rally them. The end result is that he tries to take Ren on in a fight with a bunch of Cobra tanks even though Ren has been destroying those tanks all night, thinking that the sheer force will overwhelm him; instead, his tanks are all taken out and then Adam himself is locked in an Aura-nullifying collar within a single attack.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Blake does her best to comfort Yang when they're led to believe Ruby died and, in part to atone for her role in keeping Yang from helping her, tags along with her to the Arkham Knight's HQ to finally defeat the maniac once and for all.
  • At her own request, Jaune mercy kills Velvet, and he and Weiss both honor her wish not to be named to the public even though it means her name can never be cleared.
• Power at a Price: Hazel is able to inject Venom directly into his veins due to his Semblance, which severely upgrades his strength, resilience, and speed. The problem is that once it wears off, all of his base attributes are lowered, meaning that the more Venom he uses, the weaker he gets whenever he's off of it. By the time of the breakout, he requires a storage tank on his back to constantly feed him Venom in order to function, and if it gets damaged he goes down quickly.
• Power Nullifier: The Atlas military has Aura-dampening technology in order to incarcerate criminals who have their Auras unlocked. It ends up being the only reason the heroes are able to subdue Jaune; he's simply too powerful with his Semblance, meaning the only way to take him out is to lock it away to force a one-on-one fight.
• Pragmatic Hero:
  • Ozpin puts Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Pyrrha, and Ren in charge of dealing with Scarecrow because the Arkham Knight is targeting them and has already proven himself capable of attacking an army head-on, meaning that the only alternative, putting them on the wall with the other Huntsmen, puts the entire defense of the Kingdom in danger. He fully admits to them that he's basically throwing them to the wolves, but all of them admit that it's the least bad option he has.
  • Though the Red Hood is willing to kill his enemies, he advocates sparing Mercury and Hazel, arguing that while they may be ruthless killers, their presence prevents even worse people from taking their place in their respective criminal fields and their relatively good intentions make them more predictable than others.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Cinder notes that the only reason Salem's cabal ever tolerated Tyrian was that he was very good at killing the people that needed killing; otherwise, they all did their best to stay the hell out of his way.
  • Mercury mentions to himself that Salem's gambit to "rescue" Jaune from Tyrian is a terrible idea - not because of the manipulation and torture involved, but because recruiting someone as clearly mentally unstable as him could never end well. He ends up vindicated when Jaune goes rogue as Red Hood and singlehandedly ends the Age of Heroes by killing all of Salem's former forces.
  • Jacques doesn't test the fear toxin on children not because of any moral quandaries, but because the only time he did led to Cinder almost killing him in a blind rage.
• Pulling the Thread: After Yang offhandedly jokes that one of Watts's riddles was answered by the gears in his office, Ozpin starts thinking of the implications of that statement. Only people who ever entered the office could've known about it and Watts never did, so someone must have told him. A glance at the list of people Watts formerly worked with brings up no one who could've done it, so one of his current allies must have - only none of them have been in the office as far as he knows. This leaves the only one who could've done so as the Arkham Knight, which severely truncates the list of suspects.
• Redemption Equals Death: Jaune only dies after he's killed or otherwise permanently disabled every supervillain he created; his final target is the Joker, and Tyrian gets in one fatal stab before he dies. Jaune then walks through the Emerald Forest reminiscing on his Initiation, falls at the feet of the tree Pyrrha pinned him to, sees Nora's spirit telling him he can let go now, and dies in peace having done everything he could to right his wrongs.
• Redemption Rejection: In their final confrontation, Jaune finally tells Qrow why he targeted him - to prove that even one of Ozpin's most loyal forces could be driven to madness like he was - and begs him to back down from his path, promising to get him help. Qrow takes a look at his terrified nieces and realizes with horror just how far he's fallen, but he concludes that Jaune was right and continues with his plan, forcing Jaune to attack him.
• Red Herring: Nicholas Arc, Jaune's father, is noted to have always disliked Ozpin, took Jaune's death among the worst of his family, has a body type very similar to the Arkham Knight, and disappears from his home around the time that the Arkham Knight begins his crusade, leading Qrow to believe that it might be him. It later turns out that Salem had him captured by Grimm specifically to lead Ozpin astray, but Hazel ends up letting him go a few weeks before the gas attack.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse: The timeline is clear that Jaune "died" nine months before the story begins, yet he later quotes Jason's line saying that he was tortured for over a year. It's later revealed that as extra torture, Tyrian made Emerald use her Semblance on him in a manner that destroyed his sense of time, and he was so traumatized and determined to get revenge that he never caught the discrepancy.
• Sadist: As always, Tyrian Callows. His torture of Jaune tormented the poor kid so badly that he became a supervillain to get revenge for it, and it's later revealed that Salem only took him in the first place because Tyrian was begging for a "toy" to play with. Becoming the Joker only makes this worse, as Tyrian intends to take his sadistic fetishes out on the entire Kingdom of Vale.
• Secret-Keeper: Pietro does whatever he can to keep all his work secret due to what might happen should the truth get out. Originally, only he and Ozpin are aware of the Joker infected, though he also takes the opportunity to break some confidentiality laws and give him the Batsuit and Paladin Car for his students to use.
• Secret Test of Character: Implied; when the Blacksmith gives Hazel the chance to Ascend when he decides to stay in the Ever After, Hazel decides not to, arguing that he needs to prove to himself that he's capable of changing before he can have that change forced on him. The Blacksmith smiles and immediately sends him back, implying that's what she was hoping he would say.
• Self-Harm: The stress of trying to lead her fracturing team while the Arkham Knight begins dredging up horrible memories drives Pyrrha to attempt self-harm. She gets away with it once and is distressed by how relieving it feels, but Nora catches her the second time, and neither she nor Ren let her out of their sight after that.
• Serial Killer: After the breakout, the once-powerful Dr. Merlot is left as a wandering serial killer killing those he deems imperfect and transforming the survivors into his Dollotrons so he can continue his Grimm experiments.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several scenes are heavily influenced by Arrow:
    • The Arkham Knight's murder of Sun is framed similarly to Slade Wilson's murder of Moira Queen.
    • Weiss breaking Jaune out of prison shares much of its dialogue with Oliver recruiting Deathstroke against Prometheus.
  • The Paladin Car's design is explicitly compared to a Transformer.
  • Qrow's entire character arc mirrors Harvey Dent's from The Dark Knight, complete with taking a child hostage to torment a former friend, his obsession with luck, and his death being an accident.
• Sole Survivor: Dr. Young is the only staff member of Arkham Asylum to survive the night.
• Something Only They Would Say: Jaune's vision of Nora tells him to tell Ren "We have to be brave". After his reaction clues Jaune in that it means something, Ren reveals that it was the first thing he ever said to her and that Jaune had no way of knowing that.
• Spanner in the Works: Taiyang agrees to lure Pyrrha to the Arkham Knight's HQ by sending out a distress call and banking on her coming alone, hoping to hand her over to Scarecrow in exchange for Ruby. Unfortunately for him, Blake and Yang tag along, and the trio ends up defeating the Arkham Knight anyway, rendering the entire trade pointless.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Dr. Young survives the Joker's breakout in Arkham Asylum because Marrow notices the safe is trapped before she gets close enough to detonate it.
  • Penny's first body is still destroyed, but her second makes it through the story alive as Mantle's resident superhero.
• Spotting the Thread: Once Pyrrha clues him in that what he believes does not correlate with the facts, Jaune starts wondering just what could have destroyed his sense of time so badly as to add six full months to his experiences. He soon realizes that only someone with a Semblance that can affect the mind could have that effect on him, and while trying to replicate it, he subconsciously taps into Emerald's Semblance. The realization that Tyrian worked with Emerald makes him realize that Cinder and Salem had to have been in on his torture, and the revelation breaks his mind.
• Start of Darkness: Beacon's absolute failure to protect Sun is the beginning of Blake's disillusionment with the law, kickstarting a chain of events that end with her deciding to ditch both good and evil entirely.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When the heroes realize that Watts has copied countless Semblances, they begin to speculate various complicated methods of doing so. It's Jaune who points out that to accomplish it, he'd only have to copy one Semblance - Jaune's own - and then just stock up on Semblances just like Jaune did.
• Story Arc: There are three main arcs across the entire story:
  • The first is the setup, where the Arkham Knight makes his introduction, Cinder slowly becomes the Scarecrow, and the various heroes and villains are put in place for the night of the Vytal Festival.
  • The second is the night of the Vytal Festival when Scarecrow's attack begins. The various supervillains Cinder creates all break out from Salem's grip and begin simultaneous attacks on Vale, eventually ending with Scarecrow's defeat and the Arkham Knight's incarceration.
  • The third is around six months after, when Tyrian/Joker stages a mass breakout of all the supervillains, forcing the heroes to release Jaune to fight by their side. It chronicles Jaune's attempts to achieve redemption by killing all the supervillains he's responsible for creating.
• Strong, but Unskilled: The Arkham Knight is perhaps the strongest foe anyone has ever encountered due to his copying Semblance, but as the heroes soon discover, underneath that strength is Jaune, whose combat abilities are average at best. Once the heroes are able to force his Aura dormant, he's no longer a physical threat, since his strength comes from Yang's Semblance and his skill comes from Velvet's.
• Supporting Protagonist: The fic is essentially Ren's Origin Story and thus he's the long-term protagonist, but Pyrrha is the actual main character for most of the fic and leads the charge against the Arkham Knight.
• This Cannot Be!: Just before the Knight kills Sun, he takes off his mask to reveal his identity. Sun's last words are an exclamation that it can't be possible, and the Knight slits his throat before he can get the name out.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Downplayed; Ren does support killing the supervillains, but only because he realizes there's simply no way to contain them that doesn't risk future escapes. Once they're all gone, however, Ren is a firm believer in non-lethal crime-fighting, refusing to use his weapons unless he knows the attacker has Aura. He specifically cites Jaune's brutality in dispatching the supervillains to explain his reasoning, saying that the average mugger or thief doesn't deserve that kind of punishment.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After everything Penny goes through throughout the fic, Jaune finally grants her a reprieve by replacing her Aura with his own after she sacrifices it, thus letting her save the day without losing her personality and memories in the process.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the beginning, Pyrrha is very self-conscious and unsure of herself as a leader, largely dictating her actions on her fears. Ruby's "death" completely changes her mindset and makes her go on the offensive, and by the end, she's become confident enough that Scarecrow's fear toxin has no effect on her.
• Tragic Villain:
  • For all his cruelty, Jaune as the Arkham Knight is an absolutely tortured human being. He was physically and mentally tortured by Tyrian for six months for literally no reason, driven mad by Salem's corruption, and turned against the friends he loved so much. Once he's arrested and his Aura is rendered dormant, he's briefly rendered completely insane from the guilt of everything he did, only comes back to his senses through sheer force of will, and intends to die the moment he's cleaned up the mess he made.
  • Neptune is ultimately just as much a victim of the Knight as anyone else, driven mad by Roman's Semblance and Salem's corruption. After Weiss finally strikes the killing blow, Neptune comes to his senses just long enough to nonverbally thank her for releasing him from his pain.
  • Qrow goes through an ungodly amount of trauma, losing his beloved teammate Summer, his former tribe, his sister, his best friend Glynda, and ultimately getting half of his face blown off by the Arkham Knight after getting a dose of fear toxin. The result is that he goes completely mad and declares revenge against the wrong people, targeting the few members of his family he still has left like Yang and Ruby.
  • Velvet is slowly consumed by her infection thanks to the Joker's blood, turning her from a good-hearted and meek woman into a homicidal maniac madly in love with a genocidal psychopath. Every time she manages to break through and come back to reality, she expresses nothing but horror for her actions, and it gets to the point that she asks Jaune to kill her before he kills Joker.
• Uncertain Doom: Ironwood's final status at the end of the story is unknown. It's established that Winter died offscreen during the Time Skip, but no one knows where Ironwood is by the end even though Pietro speculates that he didn't have much longer to live.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In response to the Knight's threats, Ozpin benches RWBY and PRN to send Team CFVY to Mountain Glenn in their stead, thinking that without RWBY/PRN's presence, the Knight won't be tempted to attack. While the Knight doesn't attack, he does show up long enough to pick up Velvet's Semblance, meaning that he can not only copy every Semblance he sees, but he can also copy any fighting style he sees.
  • Having finally had enough of Cinder's attitude, the Arkham Knight provokes a fight with her in Merlot's lab, and it causes her to ingest a prototype fear toxin. This leads to her becoming the Scarecrow, going rogue from Salem, taking over his operation, causing the Fall of Vale (thus kickstarting the Age of Heroes), and leading to several more supervillains being created in her wake.
  • Out of fear for what may happen to her, Velvet locks Coco in a cell in the movie studios and forces her team to back off when they try to free her. This leaves her completely defenseless when Scarecrow attacks the base near the end of the night, and she alongside Pietro are used as hostages to force Pyrrha and Ozpin's cooperation; this directly leads to Ozpin's death and Mistral and Vale beginning to have international tensions.
• Villain Decay: The longer that Roman works with the Knight, the further his position in the underworld falls. His reputation gets ruined as the Knight's horrifying crimes start coming to light, he loses control of his partner and love, a mask gets burned on his face during an attack on a Huntsman (which in itself turns him into an underworld pariah), and his plea bargain to escape the consequences for the gas attack kills his credibility on both sides of the law for good. By the time he's released, he's a complete joke to the underworld and is reduced to a wandering arms dealer who dies ignominiously in a Bullhead crash.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • After spending months being in control of himself, as soon as Jaune unmasks himself to Pyrrha, he unravels at a terrifying pace. He goes from a calm militant to an angry psycho within minutes, and by the time Taiyang is engaging him, he's little more than a feral animal lashing out at everything.
  • Cinder does not take it well when Pyrrha tanks a dose of fear toxin without feeling a thing. She goes from trying to scare her to murdering her in the blink of an eye, saying that "without fear, life is meaningless".
• Villainous Plan Inertia: Watts himself is taken out fairly easily in spite of his Semblance, as Jaune can simply use his own to counteract it. The issue is that one of the Semblances he copied was Penny's, which allows him to kickstart the Enlightenment anyway, and only Penny sacrificing her own life is able to bring it to an end.
• Wham Episode: The mini-arc titled "The Worst Night of Their Lives" ends with Nora and Glynda's deaths, Qrow and Roman's disfigurements, Ilia unlocking the powers of Poison Ivy, Yang earning Watts's ire by saving one of his hostages, Blake stealing without justification for the first time, and Ironwood going mad and destroying a large chunk of the Atlas military.
• Wham Line:
  • Right when Pietro discerns the identity of the fifth Joker infected, the movie studios come under attack. Just before he calls Ozpin for help, he gets a quick glance at the name - Velvet Scarlatina.
  • After severe badgering from Hazel, Mercury finally admits why he's so determined to get back to Remnant:
    Mercury: Because if I don't get back, then the only person I ever loved dies!
• What the Hell, Hero?: After Ruby's supposed death, Yang gives Blake a thorough chewing out for focusing so hard on her own pain and suffering that she caused even more of it for other people. It shakes her enough that she sticks around to help stop Jaune and Watts, but she once again ditches everyone after that.
• Wild Card: By the time of Scarecrow's attack, Blake only cares about serving her own ends. As a result, she fluctuates between sides based on whatever helps her the most at the moment, though she ends up proving vital to depowering Jaune before she leaves the heroes entirely.
• Would Hurt a Child: One of Jacques Schnee's test subjects is a seven-year-old boy.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Downplayed; as Hazel starts encouraging Mercury to own up to his positive emotions, he abruptly stops the talk to tell Hazel not to bother calling him a good person. Hazel notes that he would never call Mercury a good person, just not a legitimate sociopath like he pretends to be.

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