Fanfic / Black Rose Blooms Silver

Black Rose Blooms Silver is an AU story of RWBY that is updated daily. The idea is that, when rescuing a young Yang and Ruby, Qrow was just a minute later than in canon. As a result, Yang is left with scars on her back, while Ruby is somehow transformed into a human/Grimm hybrid… while still keeping her kind and happy nature. As you might imagine, things start to diverge from canon pretty quickly after that.

The story is complete as of 12/25/2023, with all the remaining chapters at the time, over 30, being released on the same day.

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Black Rose Blooms Silver contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: A lot. There are numerous plotlines that are set up and then completely forgotten (often by being resolved offscreen). Cinder's soul merging with Amber after becoming the Fall Maiden, Ironwood's descent into villainy, the fates of Adam, Hazel, and Torchwick, the Spider assassins...
• Absurd Phobia: While Blake isn't a fan of dogs in general, she's especially scared of corgis in this AU, because their short legs freak her out. Ruby uses a more feline form to comfort her after this. For her part Blake knows that it's not a rational fear, but she still can't help it.
• A-Cup Angst: Weiss has explicit "boob envy" in this AU, especially given that Ruby is clearly going to grow up to be larger than her.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Ruby's Grimm abilities make her leagues more powerful than she is in canon, and she's more skilled at hand-to-hand besides. Not to mention all the other weapons she's training herself to use in addition to a version of Crescent Rose even more overpowered than the canon one.
  • Yang is significantly more skilled in this AU, largely due to her injury and guilt over what happened to Ruby causing her to train harder. When she faces a Boarbatusk for Port's class, it takes less than ten seconds to beat, with the rest of the class sans Ruby sitting in Stunned Silence at the sight. Her idea of a "vacation" weapon is basically what she has in canon.
  • After Adam loses his blade in the fight at the docks, he did something that he never showed the ability to do in canon and channels Moonslice's stored energy into his gun.
  • Penny gets numerous upgrades beyond what she could do in canon, largely because of Ruby.
  • Neo eventually becomes the new Winter Maiden, something she never became in canon.
  • Summer Rose in this AU is the Summer Maiden, of which there was no indication in canon.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Adam shows up when RWBY and Penny go after the White Fang at the docks, much earlier than he deigned to show up in canon.
  • Zwei is first seen in the present-day story after RWBY and company visits Tai at home on Patch after the first semester ends, before the Mountain Glenn incident.
  • Pietro first shows up in the equivalent of Volume 2, much earlier than he appeared in canon.
• Adaptational Gender Identity:
  • Yanga and Blake are implicitly cisgendered in canon. In this AU they're trans.
  • Nora is later revealed to be trans as well.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Cinder doesn't turn into the megalomaniacal monster she is in canon, thanks to Ruby rescuing her before she snapped, and Qrow and Tai taking her in and raising her in an actual loving environment.
  • Emerald, Mercury, and Neo's circumstances change as a result of Cinder's changing, and end up going to Beacon with her.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Cardin is somehow even worse in this AU. Besides being rude to Ruby when he thinks that she can't hear him, he's also transphobic. No one misses him when he and CRDL get expelled.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Thanks in part due to having to interact with Ruby, who passes herself off as a Faunus in this AU, and Ruby directing her to talk to Blake about Faunus rights, Weiss starts to move past her anti-Faunus Fantastic Racism earlier than in canon.
• An Arm and a Leg: After Ruby goes One-Winged Angel on him, Adam manages to escape, but loses an arm in the process.
• Animal Motifs: Besides her wolf motif (such as her Grimm form taking on a shape based on a Beowulf but more ferocious and with traits from other Grimm species), Ruby is also associated with corgis. She likes to take the form of a Grimm corgi with her Voluntary Shapeshifting (both for inconspicuous transportation and for cuddling with her loved ones), and she claims to be a corgi Faunus to people who don't know the truth of her nature.
• Anti-Climax: Most of the fights are this. Instead of showing the action, the fic prefers to give summaries after it's all over, meaning that large elements of the canon are skipped entirely.
• Asshole Victim: If it wasn't Adam, who did everything that he did up until then in canon and then tried to shoot Ruby's head off when she interfered with him killing Blake, him being rendered comatose and slowly dying due to the Grimm flesh and limb he got from Salem being hit by Ruby's Silver Eyes would be almost tragic. For him it's well-deserved. He's ultimately dragged off and and killed by a Beringel during the attack on Vale, and Yang and Blake's only concern about celebrating his demise is that it feels almost like an Anti-Climax after everything he's done.
• Assimilation Backfire:
  • During their fight Marcus Black apparently stole Qrow's Semblance... only for him to end up killed due to his lack of familiarity with the bad luck it generates. Qrow is honestly glad that it's gone though it eventually returns, if changed.
  • This is also how Ruby became what she is. A Hound tried to grab her after she got separated from Yang, but between her semblance manifesting and her silver eyes activating, she somehow ended up the dominant personality and was able to use her skills for good.
  • Adam accepted a gift of Grimm flesh from Salem to replace the arm and flesh that Ruby tore off him after he tried to kill her, so when her Silver eyes activate he's severely hurt and rendered comatose, slowly dying. The only reason that he doesn't die from it is that a Beringel gets him first.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Ruby is basically living primordial sludge that can shapeshift into horrifying beasts and summon Grimm, but she uses her abilities to help people and only reserves the truly frightening stuff for those she senses no good in, like Adam Taurus.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: When Weiss is infected by a Nightmare, after rampaging as a Sea Feilong to clear out the surrounding Grimm, Ruby turns into a Nightmare herself, since only one Nightmare can infest a person at a time, and the strongest one always kicks the other out, and manages to counter it in Weiss's dreamscape with happy dreams so she can force it out out and eat it.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ruby is still the sweet and loving girl that she is in canon, but now she's got Grimm abilities and instincts to back it up. For instance, when she discovers what Cinder's stepmother is doing to her Ruby uses her summoned Grimm to reduce her to a stain on the ground and tear her hotel apart.
• BFG:
  • Crescent Rose is this, being even more powerful than in canon. While capable of using a wide variety of calibers, the fact that it can use 38mm autocannon rounds takes the cake, Blake being baffled that Ruby can use something that was designed for gunships and mecha with just one hand. Her custom ammo mixes certainly help of course (at one point it's mentioned that May Zedong tried to use Ruby's spare ammo in her own weapon while defending Beacon and needed to completely rebuild it afterwards). After Penny rebuilds it, it's even bigger.
  • Gianduja, after Ruby and Penny upgrade it, is so powerful that sometimes Coco doesn't even need to use her Hype Semblance, and one time she did use it a hole was blasted into one of Beacon's live fire buildings.
• Big Eater: Weiss of all people becomes one here, stuffing herself full of fast food whenever she gets a chance. Apparently it was triggered by eating actually good pizza for the first time after a lifetime of the flavorless stuff in Atlas, and she's been repeatedly banned from numerous establishments in Vale as a result of her insane orders. When Ruby and Penny make a huge holiday meal, while the others are bemoaning the exercise that they'll need to undergo to lose the weight they'll get from the food, Weiss is just excited.
  • Blake isn't much better with fish, apparently her own father has enforced a standing ban in any fish restaurant in Menagerie that prevents them from giving her more than four servings.
• Blackmail Backfire: In this AU Cardin's attempt to blackmail Jaune only ends up causing problems for him. As it turns out, Glynda is more willing to believe Jaune over Cardin, both because the rest of JNPR and RWBY back up Jaune and because Cardin is not only an asshole that multiple people had already lodged complaints about despite it still being fairly early in the school year, but is actually doing worse academically than Jaune despite the young Arc's lack of training and troubles staying awake in class. As a result, Cardin gets put on academic probation and gets his dad on his case. His attempt to get revenge in Forever Fall only leads to further humiliation, and ultimately expulsion for him and the rest of Team CRDL.
• Blessed with Suck: Powerful as Ruby is, her abilities do have a few downsides. For instance, her empathic abilities have a range of several miles and can't really be turned off (with later events revealing that large amounts of positive emotions can apparently make her high, and that she's been aware of people having sex near her), and looking like a Faunus with two animal traits is the closest that she can get to human for more than half an hour or so despite her shape-changing abilities, which Ruby is a bit annoyed by. Her massive amounts of Grimm essence also set off alarms if she's not careful. She also can't take people along with her when using Petal Burst without intense nausea and Aura damage from the Grimm essence composing her for a good chunk of the story, and even afterward it still caused dizziness and nausea. And then she gets taken over by Salem briefly...
• Book Dumb:
  • After his Blackmail Backfire, it's notes that Cardin's grades are actually worse than Jaune's at the time, despite Jaune's issues with staying awake and and apparently lacking general education.
  • Ruby, despite her engineering skills, tends to go catatonic in history class, as Glynda notes. Despite her skills with Dust being enough that she's in Advanced Dust Mechanics, Weiss notes with some incredulity that she doesn't know what "titration" means.
  • Blake is far from stupid, but the fact that she grew up outside the kingdoms means that her math skills are described by Glynda as "rough", and it's heavily implied that she's being charitable.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Using a Seer, Salem triggers Ruby to go on a rampage at the White Fang rally.
  • Team NDGO is brainwashed using a Semblance and sent to insert the virus into the tower systems.
• Brick Joke: Early on it’s noted that Weiss’s obsession with fast food was triggered by eating good pizza after a lifetime of eating Atlas pizza. Near the end, it’s once again noted that Atlas pizza is absolutely awful by Hazel, who made the mistake of eating some and was on the toilet when Qrow arrived to stop Watts as a result.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Cardin is noted to have wet himself after Ruby deliberately misses with one of her most powerful rounds. Later, after seeing Ruby effortlessly defeat an Alpha Ursa and it's fellows, then threaten them if she ever sees them acting like bullies again, the rest of CRDL gets in on it.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Ruby and Penny manage to defeat the Wyvern, but Penny is severely damaged and Ruby more or less goes into stasis for weeks to recover.
• Bullying a Dragon: Even after being shown what she did to the Grimm she fought in Initiation, in Chapter 27 Cardin seems to forget that he spent the first day or two scared of her and goes from muttering mean things under his breath to openly saying that he'll beat her easily. Ruby then proceeds to deliberately miss him with one of her strongest rounds and gives him ten seconds to surrender, which he takes in terror. Even after this, he keeps muttering mean shit about Ruby when he thinks that RWBY can't hear.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Ruby is noted to be horrible at keeping secrets, like using her "Semblance" all over campus as soon as she gets friends she can rely on after keeping it secret for a decade.
• Cast Full of Gay: The entirety of Team RWBY is some flavor is LGBTQ, as is Cinder's team, JNPR, and Penny...
• Cerebus Syndrome: After the start, the story is largely humor and fluff, but then things start to get darker, especially when Adam blows off Ruby's head.
• Cleavage Window:
  • Cinder's outfits usually have them, largely because Neo is just the right height to just lay her head on her breasts and likes to do so.
  • Weiss explicitly notes that her new outfit has one, even using the trope name.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Ruby suspects that the reason that most of Faunus students at Beacon don't fight back against Cardin's bullying is that they're so used to assholes with friends in high places doing the same thing that they don't even bother anymore.
• Costume Evolution:
  • In Chapter 53 both Wiess and Blake revamp their combat outfits.
  • In Chapter 81 Penny gets a new outfit of her own.
  • After the second semester starts, we get some art of JNPR in new combat outfits as well.
• Cuddle Bug: Ruby is rather fond of cuddling and hugging her friends and family, as her abilities as The Empath let her know when they're feeling down. She's even explicitly called touch-starved a couple times, and tackle hugs Penny in the middle of class at one point. Once she and Penny have a Relationship Upgrade, they're cuddling every chance they get, much to the annoyance of their teammates.
• Cuteness Proximity: Ruby's corgi form is adorable, but Weiss in particular goes gaga over it.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • When Yang fights the Boarbatusk in Port's class, the fight lasts all of ten seconds.
  • Using just her Semblance and a dagger, Ruby defeats a pair of experienced Beringels in less than twenty seconds.
  • Ruby faces off against Team MRLO by herself and manages to win with relative ease.
  • When going berserk thanks to Salem, Ruby sends Team SSSN flying far away from the battlefield with a singe tail swipe.
  • When Team CMNE fights Team CNTN in the Vytal Tournament, the former easily beats the latter, to the point that when just Crimzon Carnation is left, she surrenders rather than continue fighting, knowing that she has no chance against them.
  • CFVY's own battle is apparently rather one-sided, in part due to last-minute upgrades from Ruby.
  • RWBY and Penny apparently defeat Team FNKI in a fairly one-sided match, with the best the latter can do is annoy them.
• Dual Wielding: Ruby is fully capable of using both Crescent Rose and Augury at the same time, which she does when facing off with the White Fang at the docks.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but in the end Salem is defeated and reincarnated in the Ever After with Ozpin, Summer is returned to her family after over a decade of absence, JNPR also being reunited and returning from the Ever After, the Grimm start to dwindle in number without Salem to command them, Blake, Yang, and Weiss, and Cinder, Emerald, and Neo get married, and the last scene of the story is Ruby marrying Penny.
• Eating Machine: Penny's sense of taste is lacking compared to a biological human's, but she's still capable of eating a small amount, which besides helping her blend in allows her to help keep her synthetic skin repaired. Her sense of taste is improved after her upgrade.
• The Empath: Thanks to her Grimm abilities, Ruby can sense emotions around her for miles.
• Epic Fail: Cardin tries to get revenge on Jaune for his Blackmail Backfire in Forever Fall by throwing the sap onto him and then releasing some rapier wasps so they'll attack him... only to miss by a mile and hit Nora instead, who simply uses a Lightning Dust crystal to electrocute the wasps to death before they can hurt her while being unhurt thanks to her Semblance. As if Jaune beating Cardin when he rushes after the other boy in a blind rage wasn't enough humiliation, Yang records it and he ends up getting his team expelled for his troubles.
• Everyone Can See It: It soon becomes clear to everyone, except Ruby and Penny themselves, that the gynoid and half-Grimm girl have a mutual crush on each other.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While Beacon tends to be fairly lax with the stuff its students get up to on campus, since they're training them to save the world from the Grimm, they have limits. The best example of this is Cardin getting himself and his team expelled by trying to pull a potentially Deadly Prank on Jaune in revenge for his Blackmail Backfire while on their training mission to Forever Fall, since they need to prove that they can be mature on missions where lives are on the line.
  • Even Ironwood isn't paranoid enough to monitor all messages for classified secrets, at least not with people like Pietro. Any information he has on Ruby is from her and Penny's publicly available social media.
• Fell Asleep Standing Up: Due to the intense workouts she and Ruby favor, Yang has apparently fallen asleep standing up in the shower after said workouts multiple times, forcing Blake to carry her back to the dorms.
• Floating Continent: Ironwood still tries to raise Atlas into the sky, but even discounting the many problems with the plan that he knows of, he isn't aware that there are high-altitude Grimm that would attack the city there.
• Flowers of Romance: Played for Laughs, Ruby is so affectionate with Penny that her Semblance keeps creating massive amounts of rose petals. After the Time Skip, they've even started appearing in green as well, due to how their Auras are synched up.
• For Science!: Penny turns out to have inherited her father's scientific curiosity, as she develops a bit of an obsession with studying Ruby's unique abilities. While she doesn't do much to force the issue, especially after she and Ruby start dating, once Pietro turns up they start talking about it again.
• Fuzz Therapy: Ruby regularly uses this in her corgi form when her friends and family need cheering up (and a more Sabyr-like form for Blake due to her dislike of corgis).
• Hated by All: Outside of his team, no one at Beacon seems to like Cardin due to his dickish behavior.
• Haunted Castle: After defeating the Grimm Wyvern, Ruby goes into stasis and reflexively creates a large spooky castle around her and Penny.
• He's Back!: After about a year of being in a chrysalis to heal, after Penny repairs and returns Crescent Rose to her Ruby finally reawakens.
• Hope Spot: In Chapter 45, for a second Blake lets herself hope that RWBY and Penny will be able to stop the White Fang attack by themselves... and then Adam shows up.
• Horrifying the Horror: At one point Ruby scares off some Beowulves from interrupting her and Penny's date just by cocking her weapon.
• Hypocritical Humor: After Cinder says that Emerald is still a dick, Emerald immediately denies it, with this going through her head:
  Sure, she still pickpocketed people occasionally for shits and giggles and hated little kids and had a hoarding problem and was snarky and rude to people she didn’t hang out with often and played some mean pranks sometimes and thought that optimistic people were idiots but… uh.
  Hm.
• Humanoid Abomination: As a result of her change, Ruby is basically a human-shaped mass of Grimm essence, with the only part of her original body that she's sure is left being her Silver Eyes.
• I Am Not Weasel: Ruby is, or was, human, but since she can't look like a human for more than a short period at a time, she passes herself off as a wolf Faunus with the rare feature of having both ears and a tail. Blake actually approaches her before the exam because she suspects that Ruby, with her Grimm adornments, might be White Fang, though she quickly realizes otherwise.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Salem takes control of Ruby, her friends fight her while trying to reach her, and succeed.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Yang's encounter with Junior reportedly went more or less the same way that it was in canon.
  • Despite Cinder not being present, and Ruby being much more powerful here, the robbery that caused Ruby to meet Ozpin still happens and Roman still escapes.
  • Despite the swapped partners, Team RWBY is still formed with Ruby as the leader.
  • Despite Yang fighting the Boarbatusk instead of Weiss, the latter still got her ass kicked by a Grimm in Port's class (offscreen).
  • Ruby still meets Penny in Vale shortly after Blake's secrets get revealed, even if in a different way.
  • In spite of the different circumstances, a member of Team RWBY is still there when Sun disembarks after stowing away.
  • Despite the different circumstances, RWBY still learns of the White Fang operation not long after Blake's secret is revealed.
  • Mercury still lost his Semblance to his father, and didn't get it back when he died.
  • Even with Adam down an arm and Roman captured, the White Fang still keeps stealing Dust.
  • Despite Torchwich being captured at the docks, he gets broken out soon after, allowing him to be at Mountain Glenn.
  • Amber was still attacked similarly to canon, despite Cinder not being evil here.
  • Weiss still gets attacked by a Nightmare, though it doesn't stick around long.
  • The food fight still happens largely the same way as in canon.
  • At least one team of possible Salem agents still infiltrate the academies for the Vytal Festival.
  • Despite all the changes, RWBY and company still go after the White Fang rally.
  • Penny and Ruby still see the Paladin demonstration.
  • Torchwick still shows up at the rally with a Paladin.
  • Someone still gets a Grimm arm, it's just Adam instead of Cinder. He also gets similarly scarred when Ruby's Silver Eyes activate.
  • Taiyang still sends Zwei to RWBY in the mail.
  • In the end, Cinder decides to let Ozpin transfer the remaining portion of Amber's power to her, despite not having attacked Amber to steal it originally. The chapter notes even lampshade that Cinder gets Fall one way or another.
  • The Grimm Wyvern still gets released.
  • Blake still heads to Menagerie after the Wyvern's attack, even if she takes Yang and Weiss with her.
  • Ironwood is still working on his plan to take Atlas into the sky, even after the plan to steal Atlas's Relic is foiled.
  • Salem's forces still attack Atlas while JNPR and company are there, going after Fria.
  • Jaune and a few others still fall into the Ever After.
  • Despite Beacon being damaged early, the Vytal Festival is still held in Vale, just a year later.
• Internal Reveal: By Chapter 67, Qrow lets Ruby and company in on Salem's existence and that the Maidens are real.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: Ruby occasionally has trouble remembering that not everyone is as skilled or as dedicated to being a Huntress as she is, like when Port is lecturing on how he beat an Alpha Beringal and she has to remind herself that other people actually find that hard. Later, she turns out to be completely oblivious to how her Semblance is more than just an average Super-Speed one.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: When it comes to weapons, Ruby is most definitely this. Many of the weapons in her massive collection were taken off of bandits or corrupt Huntsmen she defeated when with Qrow, not to mention the Atlesian rifles she recovered and refurbished, or the junk prototypes of Signal students that the shop owner lets her keep. Heck, she even wonders of she'll be able to keep the weapons of the students that fail to get into Beacon. She even steals Blush and Wilt from Adam during their fight, as is revealed in a later chapter. Pyrrha even worries about letting Ruby visit her home out of semi-serious worry of her stealing the Arm Cannon of the Humongous Mecha defending the city, and after the semester ends one of the reasons that Ruby is happy is the fact that she won't be tempted to steal any improperly maintained weapons for a while.
• Knight of Cerebus: The story starts to get darker when Adam shows up, especially after he blows off Ruby's head and only her unique physiology lets her survive.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When he sees Ruby revive from seemingly being dead and going One-Winged Angel, Roman decides that he's not being paid enough to deal with that and surrenders.
• Little Bit Beastly: Ruby's go-to form has both wolf ears and a tail, allowing her to pass herself off as a Faunus that has the rare trait of two animal features. She can look fully human, but can't hold the shape for more than about half an hour, to her frustration. The only time she's looked fully human so far is after being freed from Salem's control.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As in canon Ruby is originally in the dark about Salem and related topics, in large part because Qrow is very protective of her, though he's eventually forced to give her (and Cinder and Yang, for starters) the details for her own safety.
• Love Bubbles: Ruby and Penny seem to keep doing this with their Sickeningly Sweethearts behavior, apparently a result of their Auras being so in synch. It's even more impressive after Ruby reawakens from her chrysalis.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Ruby's Grimm abilities often manifest in somewhat horrific ways, like her regeneration into her One-Winged Angel form when Adam blows her head off. At one point she casually finishes off a sandwich by feeding it to a mouth she grows on her stomach, creeping a watching Glynda out.
• Magic Pants: Due to Ruby's clothing being generated from her Grimm abilities, they just fade away whenever she shapeshifts into her more bestial forms.
• Marshmallow Hell:
  • Ruby gets subjected to this by Yang and Cinder at once due to Anger Born of Worry after the fight at the docks. Due to the fact that they're sisters, Ruby does not enjoy it and quickly escapes by melting into goo.
  • It's mentioned that Neo often sticks her head into Cinder's chest, since she's at the perfect height for it.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Over the course of the story, Ruby helps several other characters improve their weapons, making them much more powerful and deadly to the point that she becomes rather famous on campus for it.
  • By chapter 34, Ruby has drawn up plans on how to upgrade Blake's Gambol Shroud.
  • She helps Nora upgrade Magnhild, giving it things like a system to charge up her Semblance on the spot, and a backup for the Lightning Dust for that using the force of her swings.
  • Later, she starts helping Ren upgrade Stormflower.
  • Ruby eventually discovers that she can use her Grimm essence to enhance and transform weapons like Crescent Rose, increasing their power significantly. She later adds a laser function.
  • A few chapters latter, she manages to enhance Penny's Floating Array, using her Grimm matter to increase the strength of the Dust-steel mix. She later gives her even greater upgrades.
  • After the Wyvern incident, Penny plans to return to Atlas in order to get an upgrade, in part using plans and materials that Ruby helped create.
  • During the Time Skip, Penny repaired and upgraded Crescent Rose significantly.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Ruby's Grimm form looks like a larger, more dangerous version of Beowulf with elements of other Grimm, like a Deathstalker stinger, mixed in.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • Just like in canon, Roman and his goons go after Ruby when she's at a store he's robbing, only she's even more powerful here. As you can imagine, it goes similarly poorly. Roman escapes largely because she was trying to limit potential collateral damage (for instance, she could have easily shot down the Bullhead he was using to escape, but that would have caused it to crash into Vale).
  • Adam attacks RWBY and Penny when they foil the White Fang heist at the docks, planning to kill Blake. Unfortunately for him, he ends up triggering Ruby into her One-Winged Angel form and gets his arm torn off for his troubles.
• Multi-Melee Master: While this is far from uncommon on Remnant, Ruby takes the cake. While she typically fights with Crescent Rose and to a lesser extent Augury, she's picked up a very impressive collection of weapons over the years, and has at least a passable level of skill with all of them. Her trump card is having her Rosebuds act in coordination using all of said collection at once.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Ruby has a tendency to use her Grimm abilities for things outside of combat. For starters, she uses her Grimm shapeshifting abilities... to turn into a corgi to travel inconspicuously and for cheap (and to make her Puppy-Dog Eyes more effective when she wants things), as well as using it in tandem with her ability to sense negative emotions to sense when her loved ones are feeling sad and need some cuddles, save time in the bathroom by bathing in the sink, or just to have a Sleep Cute moment with Yang. Or just to change her outfit without actually using physical clothes. As for her ability to create and control Grimm, so far she's used it to make her clothes, including her Beacon "uniform", prop up the bunk beds in RWBY's room, and make a box for Blake's upgraded Gambol Shroud. She later tells Blake that she uses the Playing with Fire abilities she got from eating pyrokinetic Grimm to bake. She also uses her One-Winged Angel form to play fetch with Penny, and Geist abilities to take walks at night without waking her teammates. Blake later notes that her Rosebuds have basically taken over most of RWBY's dorm chores.
  • Cinder will use her Semblance to make a spoon to eat cake with. She also uses it to singe away her leg hair quickly, much to Emerald's jealousy.
  • Neo uses her Semblance to make sure that the building interior looks perfect for the Beacon dance.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Thanks to her Grimm powers, Ruby is far stronger than she appears to be, allowing her to fire shells on the level of small artillery cannons while only using one hand, and later she's able to easily drag Blake off so they can begin upgrading Gambol Shroud.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Ruby's shapeshifting makes her body particularly malleable, allowing her to shrug off things like getting impaled through the chest by a machete. She even survives Adam blowing off her head.
• Noodle Implements: Chapter 24 opens with the tail end of one of Port's stories. All we hear is that he somehow beat an Alpha Beringel with just a squirrel, a rock, a stick, and a megaphone.
• Noodle Incident: A lot of events are only vaguely defined.
  • Weiss has been banned from several Vale restaurants due to her Big Eater antics.
  • At one point Ruby and Penny got banned from a restaurant due to filling it with their rose petals.
  • It's implied that Ozpin once attempted to defeat Salem by shooting her into the sun.
  • After the Time Skip, several of the antics that Team STRQ got up to when they were at Beacon are mentioned.
  • During the defense of Beacon, May Zedong tried to use Ruby's spare ammo and ended up having to do a complete rebuild of her weapon.
• No Social Skills: Ruby, as the result of having to hide away due to her transformation, has trouble interacting with people outside of her extended family. Heck, part of the reason that she goes to Signal despite having enough skill to test out of most of the classes (other than hanging out with Yang of course) is so she can get used to regular social interactions again. Even then, she has trouble talking to people if it's not about weapons, though she starts opening up more to Blake, Wiess, and JNPR after arriving to Beacon.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When Weiss gets infected by a Nightmare Ruby turns into a Sea Feilong and kills and consumes all the Grimm in the area, turns into a Nightmare herself, and then faces off the Nightmare infecting Blake in a Battle in the Center of the Mind to force it out and eats it too. All in the space of maybe five minutes.
  • Cinder apparently managed to defeat her former stepsisters offscreen.
• One-Winged Angel: After Adam blows off her head, seemingly killing her, Ruby turns out to still be alive and takes on her Grimm form; a massive lupine Grimm with traits of several Grimm species, and then proceeds to tear his arm off before he can flee.
• Oxymoronic Being: Thanks to the way that the Hound tried to absorb her and failed due to her Silver Eyes and Semblance interacting with the process, Ruby is essentially a humanoid, sapient Grimm... but still has her soul and can use Aura and her Semblance despite Grimm normally rejecting Aura's shielding even when grafted onto a human (as shown with Cinder in canon), let alone her Silver Eyes, which destroy Grimm and are apparently the only remaining parts of her original human body as far as Ruby can tell.
• Papa Wolf: Qrow is very protective of Cinder, Yang, and Ruby, and is very clear that Ozpin will regret it if he tries to rope them into his conspiracy. When Ironwood suggests killing Ruby after Salem briefly takes control of her, he is clearly furious, and it's later mentioned that Qrow has been very clear that they can't get Ruby involved at things with Mountain Glenn unless she offers first. He's also not very happy with Cinder being offered Amber's powers, though he makes it clear that he'll support her no matter what she chooses.
• Polyamory
  • Cinder and Neo are a couple, but Emerald is also attracted to Cinder, and later joins the relationship.
  • Weiss, Blake, and Yang eventually all get together, in part inspired by the above.
  • Jaune and Pyrrha start talking about going poly with Ren and Nora during the second semester, and eventually make it official after learning that the latter two were considering it as well.
  • Apparently Sienna Khan was together with Blake's parents before their arguments over the direction the White Fang should take caused them to split, though they've recently started repairing their relationship, and later start including Willow Schnee.
  • Team STRQ was apparently in a poly relationship as well, based on some comments Glynda's made and a conversation between Raven and Qrow.
• Put on a Bus:
  • CRDL gets expelled after the Forever Fall incident. It's later revealed that they were sent to a lower-level combat school closer to the Vale Council building.
  • Cinder and her team are on a mission when RWBY arrives at Beacon, and they don't get word that they're returning until a couple months into the semester.
  • JNPR practically disappears from the story for a while not long after the CRDL bullying arc is resolved.
• Person of Holding: Ruby is able to use her Grimm abilities (apparently with some help from her Semblance) to hold massive amounts of material inside her body, ranging from her many weapons to Dust to other things.
• Queer Colors:
  • In an image included with chapter 36, a pair of blankets can be seen on Yang's bed that resemble the transgender and lesbian pride flags.
  • Blake wears the colors of the trans flag.
• Reincarnation: After she's defeated, Salem and Ozpin are reincarnated as mice in the Ever After.
• Relationship Upgrade:
  • In Chapter 65, Ruby and Penny officially get together.
  • In Chapter 66, as a result of the above, Nora stakes her claim on Ren and Pyrrha successfully asks out Jaune. Emerald also manages to go poly with Cinder and Neo.
  • In Chapter 73, Yang, Blake, and Weiss start making moves to try out a poly relationship. The next chapter shows that they have lipstick marks in the colors of the other two on each other's necks, confirming that it's going well.
  • Eventually JNPR goes full poly.
• Required Secondary Powers: Penny openly suggests that the only reason that Ruby isn't ridiculously heavy from all the Grimm mass and items she stores inside her is her Semblance's powers over mass.
• Related in the Adaptation: In this AU Lewis is Pietro's grandfather.
• Running Gag:
  • For a while Ruby, Yang, and Cinder keep trying to come up for a good collective name for the three of them.
  • Weiss being a Big Eater and getting kicked out of restaurants for her insane orders.
  • People complaining about or commenting on what Sickeningly Sweethearts Ruby and Penny are being.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: This is apparently common among Huntsmen and Huntresses, even if they stick to trying to only commit good deeds they tend to run up multiple criminal charges. Or they would at least if their licenses didn't give them special exemptions.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Apparently it took Ruby a couple of years to be able to look mostly human after she gained her powers, and even after she gained that control she's never been able to shift away her ears and tail for more than a half hour or so (and the fact that she's gotten so used to them that she feels weird without them doesn't help).
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Ruby has consumed the essence of thousands of Grimm, and carries hundreds of weapons and an insane amount of Dust inside her body... which is the same size that she is in canon. Penny openly theorizes that the only way she can avoid being ridiculously heavy is a side effect of her Semblance's mass alteration abilities.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Ruby can sense the burgeoning attraction between Yang and Blake when they first meet, and while supportive she doesn't plan on interfering... unless they get stuck and need a push. Once they and Weiss finally start making moves on each other, she's quite happy.
  • Multiple people start shipping Ruby and Penny after seeing how close they are, with Yang giving Penny the final push to confess her feelings to Ruby so they can officially start dating.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts:
  • Once Ruby and Penny officially get together they delve a bit into this territory. Weiss is the most outspoken on Team RWBY, due to her issues with crushing on Yang and Blake, but even Yang admits that them keeping the rest of the team up at night flirting is annoying, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. They're actually so affectionate that they keep causing Love Bubbles and cause piles of rose petals to appear from Ruby's Semblance, and the effect gets even more powerful after the Time Skip.
  • Some of the other couples get into this territory sometimes as well.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: At one point Qrow suggests that they try and send Salem into the sun to get around her immortality, but Ozpin shoots it down, having already tried that and failed due to the fact that Salem can teleport to Grimm essence (save for what's in Ruby due to her soul), so if they want to do that they'd have to get rid of all other Grimm essence on the planet first.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Essentially every character except Ruby, Penny, and Salem, and even the former two have their moments.
• Sixth Ranger: Penny is effectively considered a semi-official member of Team RWBY after she transfers to Beacon.
• Skilled, but Naive: Glynda notes that Weiss, while fairly skilled academically, has trouble with more practical lessons where she has to get down and dirty, to the point that she didn't even know how to pitch a tent at first.
• Slasher Smile: Ruby gets one filled with fangs after killing several Grimm during Initiation. It creeps Blake out.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In this AU the Curious Cat does not kill Alyx, who instead fights the Jabberwalkers in the Ever After.
• Stable Time Loop: In this AU's version of "The Girl Who Fell Through the World", instead of just Jaune there are characters based on every member of Team JNPR in the book, as they all fell into the Ever After, and each one of them was at least partially inspired by their literary counterparts in their weapon choices and fighting styles.
• Steel Eardrums: Averted, when Ruby fires the larger calibers Crescent Rose is capable of in this AU during the initiation exam, while Yang recovers quickly due to being used to Ruby's style of weaponry, the others take longer to get their full hearing back... especially Blake, who has four ears to suffer with.
  • Averted later with Jacques, who does not have Aura to protect him.
• Superpower Lottery: In addition to her aura and canonical Semblance, in this AU Ruby's Grimm abilities let her shapeshift, regenerate from high levels of damage, use weapons that a girl with her apparent levels of muscle mass should barely be able to life, hold large quantities of items inside herself, and even summon and control Grimm (or consume them), along with using the abilities of Grimm she's consumed. She can't even get tired unless she uses too much Grimm mass at once and needs to replenish it. Later, she discovers that she can use her abilities to transform weapons like Crescent Rose into Grimm versions, increasing their powers by a noticeable amount.
• Super-Strength: Ruby kills a bandit in the beginning just by punching him really hard in the face, and can use insanely powerful ammo without showing any negative effects due to the recoil.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The text below the image of Ruby in her Beacon "uniform" doesn't do a very good job at denying that she just shapeshifted to look like a uniform instead of buying one.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • Ruby, as in canon, loves cookies and other sweet snacks. One time, when Nora went to snatch some of hers, Ruby shifted her mouth to give herself lots of massive teeth and either venomous or acidic spit and snapped at Nora's hand, seemingly on reflex given that she was getting headpats on the time (though she later notes that it was in part because she knew that Nora would take a mile if Ruby gave an inch). This makes her sharing her snacks with Penny even more noteworthy to JNPR.
  • Cinder loves cake even more than Ruby loves cookies. When Ruby gives her a cake to celebrate seeing her again for the first time since RWBY was admitted to Beacon, she soon uses her Semblance to form a spoon and starts shoveling cake into her mouth right there, and is reluctant to give even Neo, her girlfriend, any, with Emerald and Mercury getting even less.
  • Neo loves ice cream and is very particular about it, only her own mix being acceptable to her. It's later noted by Cinder that she apparently has ice cream with every meal if possible, and that it's lucky that they exercise enough to work off the calories. She also seemingly carries ice cream on her at all times somehow.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After seeing RWBY's impressively high Grimm kill count, and hearing Crescent Rose go off, Glynda almost feels sorry for the Grimm. She expresses the sentiment again during the Mountain Glen mission, with RWBY and Penny slaughtering the resident Grimm.
• Technically Naked Shapeshifter: For the most part, Ruby uses her shapeshifting and command over Grimm mass to make clothes instead of actually wearing normal clothes. She even does so with her Beacon "uniform" instead of buying one.
• Terror Hero: Ruby delves into this when facing the White Fang at the docks, ramping up her Grimm features and making her voice scary enough that some of the weaker-willed members fall to their knees from sheer intimidation.
• Theory of Narrative Causality: The trope is all but name-dropped in the Ever After multiple times, like how it prevented any of Team JNPR from meeting up before they would have for the Stable Time Loop.
• Time Skip: After the Wyvern is defeated, the next chapter takes place three weeks later.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Time in the Ever After is weird, to say the least, with JNPR being stranded there for decades, if not centuries from there perspectives while aging extremely slowly after they get sent back in time for the Stable Time Loop, or Lewis returning ten years after he entered despite it not nearly having been nearly that long for him.
• Training from Hell: Part of why Yang and Ruby are so skilled in this AU is that, the latter's Grimm powers aside, after the incident when they were kids they went serious on their training, with the former noting that the latter has always had a thing for super-long workouts, so when at Beacon she schedules training time in six hour blocks.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Ruby is only eight but has no problems killing people if she senses evil in them.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Ruby can use her Grimm powers to change her shape significantly. Her most common form is a Grimm version of a corgi puppy, both for travelling inconspicuously with Qrow and for cuddling her loved ones when they're sad.
• Wham Episode:
  • In Chapter 100 Adam shows up at the rally with a new Grimm arm, two individuals with Maiden powers appear, and a mysterious voice ends the chapter calling out to Ruby.
  • In the following chapter we see that the voice was Salem via a Seer, who manages to force Ruby to go on a rampage against her friends.
  • The Mountain Glenn mission leads to the Grimm Wyvern being released early, Cinder taking up the Fall Maiden powers to defeat her former stepsisters, Ruby and Penny defeating said Wyvern, and Ruby creating a castle in the ruins while she goes into stasis to recover.
• What If?: The idea of the AU is that Qrow was just a minute later to save Yang and Ruby at the cottage, leading to Yang being scarred and Ruby becoming a Grimm hybrid when a Hound tried to assimilate her but she somehow resisted it. This leads to a large number of changes...
  • Thanks to having Ruby help him on Huntsman missions, Qrow ends up in Atlas with her before Cinder is pushed to the breaking point, and when they get a room at Cinder's stepmother's hotel thanks to Ironwood, Ruby discovers Cinder's mistreatment. Ruby then unleashes her powers on the hotel, reducing said stepmother to paste and freeing Cinder, who's taken in Qrow, resulting in her being more heroic.
  • Qrow ends up fighting Marcus Black, Mercury's father... and kills him (apparently before he crippled his son), due to Marcus stealing Qrow's Semblance and being hit with its bad luck effect.
  • Ruby becomes partners with Blake instead of Weiss, with Weiss and Yang becoming partners instead.
  • Yang volunteers to fight the Boarbatusk in Port's class instead of Weiss.
  • Ruby goes with Pyrrha to talk to Jaune, so she's aware of Cardin's blackmail attempt.
  • Cardin's attempt at revenge for Jaune foiling his blackmail attempt and getting him in trouble ends up getting him and the rest of Team CRDL expelled.
  • Thanks to Ruby, Blake gets a major upgrade to Gambol Shroud.
  • When on a Grimm-slaying trip for class, RWBY notices the Grimm heading towards Mountain Glenn.
  • Since Ruby already knew before Initiation, and Weiss managed to figure it out due to noticing her bow move, Blake willingly reveals that she's a Faunus and a former member of the White Fang to the others instead of letting it slip in a rant.
  • After the above, Ruby wraps around Blake with her cloak, keeping her from running off after the reveal.
  • Rather than meeting Penny by running into her when looking for Blake, Ruby meets her in an alley... when she points her sword at her, having senses the huge masses of Grimm essence in her body.
  • Thanks to Penny, Ruby hears about the Branwen clan much earlier than in canon.
  • In this AU, RWBY finds out about the White Fang operation because Yang overheard some idiot members talking about it in the grocery store.
  • Torchwick surrenders at the docks and is captured thanks to Ruby's One-Winged Angel form. Unfortunately, he doesn't stay captured long.
  • Thanks to unwittingly triggering Ruby into a One-Winged Angel form, Adam gets his arm torn off.
  • Ruby finds out about Penny being a gynoid the first day that they meet.
  • Penny plans to transfer from Atlas Academy to Beacon after the White Fang incident, hanging out in RWBY's dorm.
  • Ruby is able to use her Rosebud Grimm to keep Blake from sneaking off to investigate the Fang by herself after the Docks incident, with Yang then able to get her to accept help.
  • By chapter 65, Ruby and Penny are officially dating.
  • In Chapter 66, as a result of the above, Ren and Nora start dating, as do Jaune and Pyrrha.
  • While Amber was still attacked and her power partially stolen, it was by someone other than Cinder and company.
  • Ruby's abilities let her force out the Nightmare that infests Weiss without outside aid, preventing the dream in Ice Queendom from really getting going.
  • Pietro comes to Vale before the Vytal Festival to visit with Penny.
  • Yang takes Weiss and Blake to Junior's instead of Sun.
  • Adam is the one to get a Grimm arm here, not Cinder.
  • Instead of fighting an Atlesian Paladin at the rally, the heroes fight Ruby, who Salem has driven berserk.
  • Penny is with Ruby when the villains attempt to upload the virus, which they apparently foil, but they only capture a pawn under the effect of a mind control Semblance.
  • The Mountain Glenn mission is going about the same as canon up until the explosives are triggered and the Grimm Wyvern is released early.
  • Blake takes Yang and Weiss with her when she goes to Menagerie.
  • Tyrian is killed at the Haven battle.
  • Neo becomes the Winter Maiden at Atlas since Penny is gone, and all of JNPR falls into the Ever After.
  • Since Beacon was damaged early but the Wyvern defeated, the Vytal Tournament is held after the Time Skip. Ruby ends up winning.
  • Salem is ultimately defeated by Ruby, Penny, and the Maidens all pooling their energy during the attack on Atlas.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: When JNPR goes to the dance, the guys wear dresses and the girls wear suits, and they pull off the look rather well.
• With Catlike Tread: Unless Ruby is using her powers, neither she, Yang, or Cinder is very good at being stealthy, since they have fire-related abilities and favor overwhelming force (Glynda even noting that if Cinder had been good at stealth she would have made valedictorian). If Ruby is using her powers, on the other hand...
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • A large part of why Roman was able to get away from Ruby despite how much more powerful she is here is that she was limited by a desire to avoid collateral damage (for example, her version of Crescent Rose her could easily destroy the Bullhead Roman and his accomplices are fleeing in, but that would cause it to crash down over the city). When she faces him again at the docks, she ends up defeating him before Adam shows up.
  • Similarly, she does fairly well facing Qrow in the combat test, even considering that he taught her everything she knows about using a scythe, but she was limiting herself and ultimately lost.
  • In their first Vytal Tournament battle, it's noted that RWBYP is prohibited from using their highest caliber ammo due to the limitations of the tournament rules, making their foes harder to beat than they initially expected.
  • Cinder and Neo are unable to openly use their Maiden powers in the Tournament.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Thanks to her unique circumstances with her Semblance and Silver Eyes activating when the Hound tried to assimilate her, Ruby has a unique balance of Creation and Destruction within her, which is theorized by Penny to be why she's capable of sapience and retaining her Aura and soul despite being primarily made out of Grimm essence.
• You Need to Get Laid: Weiss is attracted to both Yang and Blake but repressing it, and Ruby and Penny's Sickeningly Sweethearts behavior isn't helping. Yang and Blake suggest trying to get her to masturbate to relieve things, but they're not having much success, and Ruby doesn't think that it'll work anyway.
• Your Head Asplode: When Adam uses Moonslice to empower Blush, he uses it to obliterate Ruby's head. Luckily she survives thanks to her powers.

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