Cover art by Jack_Wayne
. Characters
. Characters "Yang wasn't used to leadership, but she wasn't going to accept Ozpin's suggestion of mandatory rest either. Not when it meant losing her spot on Team RWBY. If she had to lead a rookie squad of police officers against the White Fang to prove she could still fight, then so be it. Too bad no one told her the VSPR was made up of Vale's worst criminals, many of which she knew by name."
— Fanfiction Dot Net summary.
Captain Dragon is a RWBY Alternate Universe story by Coeur Al'Aran, which explores an alternate ending to Season 3 where Cinder Fall’s attempt to kill Ozpin and steal the full Fall Maiden powers fails, resulting in her death. Unfortunately, this ending isn’t happy for everyone as Yang, still having lost her arm, isn’t able to return to Beacon and Team RWBY due to Ozpin believing she needs time to recover from the loss of said arm.
Unwilling to stand by and accept that decision, Yang’s plead for a second chance is accepted on one condition: that she proves herself by leading a new squad of rookie cops made up of former criminals to fight against and take down the White Fang once and for all. What could possibly go wrong?
The complete story is available to read starting here, while the cover art by Jack_Wayne can be found here.
This Fan Fic provides examples of the following tropes, which may include unmarked spoilers:
- Adapted Out:
- Salem and her forces, with the technical exception of the White Fang and Emerald, are completely missing and absent. Justified, since without Cinder to aid Salem in gaining the power of the Maidens and the Relics, she has to pull out of her schemes for the time being and begin from square one.
- Raven and her tribe don’t make an appearance either.
- Adaptational Heroism: The former criminal members of Team VSPR, so in other words, the Malachite twins, Junior, Mercury Black, Roman Torchwick, and Neo. This is entirely motivated by all of them having extremely harsh prison sentences waiting for themnote and being unable to escape Vale, so it's do the job or go to jail for decades.
- Adaptational Villainy: Emerald went through a Heel–Face Turn in Volume 8. In this story, she becomes the Big Bad here and dies a villain. On the bright side for her, it is mainly due to her snapping after Cinder's death and she gets an Alas, Poor Villain kind of death.
- Alternate Universe Fic: During the Fall of Beacon, Cinder dies while Ozpin, Pyrrha and Roman all survive. In the aftermath, several of Vale's criminals from the show have been arrested and they get recruited to form a new rookie cop team called VSPR. Yang, instead of going home to Patch after losing her arm, agrees to head the team.
- An Arm and a Leg: Yang, who lost her arm at the Battle of Beacon like in canon.
- Artificial Limbs: Like her canon counterpart, Yang eventually slaps a cyborg arm on to replace her missing one.
- Ascended Extra: Lisa Lavender, a very minor reporter from the show, takes an important role as informant of the VSPR.
- Ax-Crazy: Emerald. She’s gone so completely nuts due to Cinder’s death that she digs up Cinder’s rotting corpse, redresses it, and begins talking to it and acting like she is still alive. She believes (or deludes herself into thinking) that Cinder is ordering her to get revenge on Vale for "injuring" her so badly and stopping her scheme.
- Big Bad: Emerald Sustrai, who is the source behind the White Fang getting the Fang Virus.
- Bound and Gagged:
- During a raid on a White Fang controlled factory, Melanie and Militia find the workers tied up in one of the storerooms.
- Qrow ends up hogtying Yang's mysterious informant to her bed after mistaking him for an intruder.
- Boxed Crook: The VSPR is made up of these. And Yang.
- Canon Marches On: While somewhat minor as there is only a brief sentence which contradicts it, due to this story being written before Volume 6, Adam Taurus lacks the SDC brand scar over his eye.
- Crossover: The VSS (Vale's Secret Service) from the author’s other fanfic, In the Kingdom's Service, makes a cameo appearance within the story.
- Death by Adaptation: As noted in the summary, Cinder croaks instead of accomplishing her goal.
- A Death in the Limelight: Mercury's biggest role in the story ends with him getting killed to stop Emerald's plot.
- Demoted to Extra: The Malachite Sisters play no major role besides comic relief muscle after the VSPR's first successful assignment.
- Disability Immunity: The cyborg limb that Yang arms herself (*ba-dum-tish!*) with means Adam is unable to infect it with the Fang Virus.
- Dumbass Has a Point: During the raid on the Middivale pharmaceutical plant, Mercury starts joking that they're going to run into zombies any second now, making a bet with Junior about how Middivale has this kind of research in the plant. Junior calls him an idiot for it. He is completely right, and the White Fang are making what amounts to a zombie virus there.
- For Want Of A Nail: There are two which happen at the Battle of Beacon at the end of Volume 3:
- The first is that Roman Torchwick survives the Battle of Beacon and isn’t swallowed alive by a Grimm.
- The second is that Jaune manages to block Cinder’s arrow aiming for Amber with his shield, allowing time for the transfer of the remaining half of the Fall Maiden’s powers from Amber to Pyrrha to be completed. Without the full Fall Maiden powers, Cinder is unable to defeat Ozpin and is later killed by Pyrrha, who herself is powered up by her half of the Fall Maiden’s powers.
- Hated by All:
- Team VSPR are this throughout most of the story, with particular anger and hatred thrown at Roman. It’s bad enough that Yang gets distrust and suspicion thrown at her too by association, and the two former captains to the VSPR before Yang possibly quit due to similar treatment thrown at them.
- The White Fang, especially by the end of the story, where they’re hated even by other faunus with a grudge against humans and condemned by Menagerie.
- Hate Plague: The Fang Virus drives its victims into a frenzied state; Weiss kills an innocent man with her bare hands after getting dosed.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mercury, who is forced by Emerald, a ticking timer, and him getting infected with Fang, to sacrifice himself by blowing himself up in order to destroy the large cache of Fang, before it can infect the rest of Vale.
- Idiot Ball: The main story mostly starts because the rest of Team RWBY is carrying the ball with both hands, as they dither about telling Yang the bad news about her being held back a year. This draws incredulous comments from anyone not on Team RWBY learning of it, especially since everyone naturally assumes that Yang's team would tell her that she's on forced medical leave after a traumatic injury. And it keeps going because Yang spends the bulk of the story refusing to try and listen, due to being justifiably angry at the aforementioned Idiot Ball and trying to prove everyone wrong about her being too weak to do her job.
- Longer-Than-Life Sentence: Roman has a 500 year prison term for his crimes. And that was after bargaining down.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Cinder’s corpse gets this treatment by Emerald, who treats Cinder’s corpse as though she’s still alive and acts like she’s taking orders from her.
- Nominal Importance: Only two members of the Vale Council actually get names. So when it comes time to determine who's been giving the White Fang an edge to get their task done, guess who it is?
- Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Averted. The White Fang end up having to take over a pharmaceutical company in order to make the materials to get their plot rolling. Played straight later when the corrupt council members end up funding them to kick it into high gear.
- Recruiting the Criminal: The main recruitment policy of the VSPR. Ozpin admits this is less a bright idea and more something desperately thrown together to get morale back up after the big attack, lest the air of distrust drag more Grimm in.
- Red Herring: Once the White Fang start ramping up their terrorist actions to unforeseen depths, the VSPR start speculating on why the White Fang are focusing on killing people instead of their usual faunus-focused actions. Comparisons to Cinder's modus operandi are made, but Yang constantly says that she saw Cinder die personally. Then Cinder's coffin is found to be empty, and her burial records indicate that she could have faked her death since the body's face is too mangled to positively ID her. Nope, she's completely and utterly dead, Emerald's just stolen her body and is pretending she's still alive.
- Running Gag: The White Fang faunus captured by Team VSPR after their first successful raid refuses to give his name to Yang during interrogation, so she gifts him the name Mark. Unfortunately for him, the name sticks, despite his constantly complaints and attempts to correct Team VSPR that keep getting interrupted.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Roman avoided becoming Grimm chow and got a prison sentence instead.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Once Roman comes into the story, he and Yang pretty much run the show with the rest of the VSPR in the background.
- Technically-Living Zombie:
- Those infected by the Fang Virus are essentially this throughout much of the story, though it should be noted that those infected are able to return back to normal once they’ve been knocked out.
- This later changes though as the Fang Virus is eventually modified by Emerald and the White Fang to kill all those infected. The infected have the same feral rage, but if they get knocked out their heart explodes.
- Twin Threesome Fantasy: The Malachite twins, upon meeting him, want to bang Yang’s uncle, Qrow, and are quite vocal about it. Qrow himself isn’t exactly opposed to it and is very willing.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Much of the final chapters devolves into this, as Emerald and the White Fang release Fang into all of Vale. What’s worse is this time, it’s been modified so that anyone infected dies after, and it can be transmitted through bites, the air, and it's bloodborne.
