Hazredous Interruptions is a completed RWBY / Lyrical Nanoha crossover fanfic by Eleventh Messenger. Set just before Season 2 of RWBY and between Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the story focuses on the crew of the Arthra who, after a fierce space battle with pirates, crash onto a world populated mostly by the creatures of Grimm. With the planet’s unusual anti-magic field around it preventing most exact magic, including getting a message out to the TSAB, Lindy is forced to appeal to the local authority figure, one Headmaster Ozpin, for assistance while also managing a first-contact scenario with a pre-space flight world.
The fanfic can be read primarily here
with slightly revised chapters posted later here.
Now has a sequel - HunterS
This work provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Raven. In canon, she was a Dirty Coward who decided she was done with the Huntress life at some point in time. Here, she was guarding the Winter Maiden, a young girl named Ivory. After Ivory was killed and the Mantle was inherited by Summer Rose, Raven remembered that Ozpin's instructions had been to protect the Winter Maiden by any means necessary. She promptly faked Summer's death and spent ten years in hiding with her, because she could tell that they had a mole, and didn't want to risk her teammate's life without due reason.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The interlude chapters show the perspectives of people who aren't on Remnant but are still important to the plot in some way, such as Leti Lowran trying to organize a search and rescue mission for the Arthra, or Jail Scaglietti lending his aid to said rescue team for his own mysterious reasons.
- Anti-Magic: Implied to be the special ability of the Silver Eyed Warriors.
- Anti-Villain:
- Emerald is proving to be the only member of Team Evil with a conscience and is very slowly getting ground down by Mercury’s treatment of... everyone, Cinder distancing herself from Emerald and Mercury for appearances sake, and Yuuno being genuinely respectful of her despite knowing some of her checkered history (unlike the canon RWBY team, who she just found naive and easily-duped).
- Torchwick and Neo wind up getting this treatment as well. They're shown to be intensely loyal to each other and they're only on Cinder's side in the first place because they're convinced the kingdoms stand no chance against whatever she has planned so staying on her good side is their only chance of long-term survival. This changes immediately and dramatically once they uncover the full story behind the "refugees."
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Lindy isn't exactly happy at the beginning of chapter one. They encountered Space Pirates that damaged the Arthra, as soon as they got close to the one inhabitable planet, all of the magical systems on the Arthra shut down, and she hadn't even had her morning coffee yet. And with the turbulence, she couldn't exactly afford to have one while they were landing either!
- Backup From Other World: Happens in a very strange sense towards the end. Reinforce Zwei can't Unison with Pyrrha using her firmware. So what does she do? She switches to the firmware used by her predecessor, Reinforce Eins.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. All of Team RWBY aside from Weiss suffer severe injuries during the events of chapters 29 and 30. In particular, Blake suffers severe burns across most of her body and Yang gets torn to pieces and her hair shredded. Healing magic causes the trope to be downplayed and the injuries don't stick for very long though.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Oh boy oh boy, chapter 30 takes this trope home and cuddles it. The Wolkenritter save Sun and Neptune from White Fang troops at the Breach, Reinforce and Sentra save Hayate from Cinder, Reinforce and Hayate then turn around and save Chrono, Amy, JNPR and CFVY from an army of Grimm and the Spring Maiden, and all of Team STRQ including the long lost Summer Rose and Raven Branwen show up to save RWBY, Fate, and Arf.
- Of all people in the world, Tre comes out of nowhere to save Torchwick and Neo from Cinder's revenge in the grand finale.
- Bigger on the Inside: TSAB magitech makes use of a lot of space-compression magic to make things more portable. The Arthra uses compressed space pockets to squeeze all of its mechanical components into a much smaller volume than would otherwise be possible. More importantly, devices are portrayed as using the same technology. One particular standout case is Schwertkreutz: when Hayate has the internals unloaded and scattered around for maintenance, they fill up an entire maintenance garage and one of those components is a starship-class laser cannon big enough that Hayate has to use a ladder to do repairs on it.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: Ruby, during a White Fang protest gone wrong.
- Body-Count Competition: Pyrrha and Signum get into one in chapter 15.
- Brick Joke: In the first chapter, Team RWBY initially mistook the crashing Arthra for a meteorite, prompting Ruby to lead the team on a hunt for "glorious heaven sent star metal". 36 chapters later, Lindy bequeaths a piece of the Arthra's (metal) hull to Ruby, even using the same words to refer to it.
- Brutal Honesty: Zafira at one point describes Geffroy Schnee as the sort of man the Book of Darkness would have chosen as a suitable master. This is not a compliment.
- The Bus Came Back: After vanishing into hiding at the start of the story Tukson makes a surprise reappearance after the Breach, saving Emerald and getting her medical attention when Mercury decides she's outlived her usefulness.
- Call-Back: Early on in the story when Ruby first meets Signum she gushes over Levantein and comments that Signum must have an appreciation for the classics. Much later in the story when Signum and Winter are sparring, and Signum shows off Levantine's whip-sword form for the first time...Ruby: "WHAT?! That's not classic at all!"
- Calling the Old Man Out: Weiss gets the chance to do this to her father late in the story when he tries to come drag her home to Atlas."I am a huntress, and you will not take that from me!"
- Cerebus Syndrome: The first leg of the story is strongly focused on character development and interactions between the heroes on both sides of the crossover, with some exceptions such as Ruby and Weiss dealing with the fallout of the White Fang riot. What interactions there are with Cinder's plots tend to be things that screw said plots up. Then the dance arc wraps up and Cinder reveals that not only is she a master of Xanatos Speed Chess but that she can also call in reinforcments from Salem in a pinch.
- Continuity Nod: Ruby's slingshot trick from Players and Pieces shows up again as one of Team RWBY's named attack patterns, dubbed "Thorn Cannon."
- Curbstomp Battle: Signum's "rematch" with Banesaw in chapter 30 lasts a grand total of two moves: one to shatter his chainsaw, and one punch shatters both his aura and his jaw.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Yang's birth was an accident and Raven knew she would be a shitty absentee parent, what with already being devoted to the full-time job of bodyguarding the Maidens, so she left Yang with Summer and Taiyang, knowing that Summer would be a much better parent than she could ever hope to be. Raven claims to have no regrets about this, only that she then accidentally took Summer away from Yang as well.
- Deus ex Machina: In the fight against the kraken Grimm and the Summer Maiden, Fate, Arf, and Team RWBY are all incapacitated or on the brink of defeat, when Ruby's mother Summer appears, reveals that she was in hiding for the past ten years, and proceeds to take over the fight.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Just as Fate is about to put the finishing blow on the kracken Grimm, she is unceremoniously struck by lightning, stopping her attack and incapacitating her for the subsequent fight against the Summer Maiden.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked. At one point Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate realize their room has been bugged and use their Devices to track the signal back to its source, but in the meantime Fate has Bardiche play a really salacious soundtrack of what sounds like the Aces having a threesome to keep the eavesdropper distracted. Some hours later, the Aces track down and capture Kasta, who's still listening with rapt attention to the audio feed.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The magic distortion field around Remnant is an important plot element but it also serves as this: it stops the Arthra's crew from simply phoning or teleporting home and coming back with reinforcements, and also prevents the heroes from making the fullest use of their magic, ensuring that they can't just fly away from their enemies and blast them from a safe distance. The need to conceal their identity from the general populace and avoid causing a panic means the mages need to hide their Devices and adopt the weapons and fighting styles of the local Huntsmen. That also means using Aura rather than magic whenever possible. Ironically, this means that Amy actually gets empowered by the handicap, since she needs to have her aura Activated in order to believably pass as a Huntress.
- Dramatic Irony: A minor subplot touches on this trope: Blake is wary of the TSAB's enforcers on the grounds of them being superpowered space police and her being a former terrorist. This comes out most in her interactions with Fate of all people, who is herself a former criminal and ironically would be the single person of the Nanoha cast most likely to sympathize with her position.
- Later on, Fate is running herself ragged learning about the White Fang, and Blake advises her to take a break every now and then. In canon, Blake spent a good chunk of Volume 2 burning the candle at both ends working on trying to stop the Fang alone.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Reinforce's Unison Mode turns Pyrrha versus Cinder into a battle of equals.
- Elite Mook: Banesaw, the chainsaw-wielding juggernaut who smacked Weiss around at the end of season 2. Here, he makes an Early-Bird Cameo during the White Fang riot and goes up against Signum with... substantially less success.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Torchwick might be a murderer, a bigot, and a criminal mastermind, but seeing what Briar Breeze did to Team RWBY still gives him pause. Whatever else he might be, he's not a sadist, and his loyalty to Cinder and her plan is nonexistent. The only reason he's going along with it, is because he believes doing so is best for his and Neo's survival, and when he realizes that someone more powerful than her has shown up he immediately starts planning to screw her over as permanently as he can.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Lindy is passed as Chrono's sister during their stay at Beacon.
- Fantastic Racism: Very little of it really shows up, but it gets discussed several times given the visual similarities between faunus and familiars, particularly when Blake takes offense to Zafira mistaking her for a guardian beast and calling her such.
- A Father to His Men: Ignoring that Lindy is literally the mother of Chrono and the adoptive mother of Fate, Torchwick comes across as this in his interactions with Neo. Whatever their exact relationship is, it’s obvious he really cares about her well-being. (It's revealed towards the end that Neo is his niece.)
- Straighter example in Ruby. Even though she was badly chewed up in the fight against Briar Breeze, she insisted that Shamal tend to the rest of her team before seeing to her injuries.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- Possibly the single biggest hit to Cinder’s plans comes when Arf and Yuuno head to Tukson's bookstore to get some information on the history of Remnant just in time to blow Emerald and Mercury's assassination job. Tukson vanishes from the story and goes into hiding but not before getting the word out to his contacts in the White Fang that Cinder is up to no good, causing all kinds of problems and complications when a splinter group of moderates splits off from Adam's extremists.
- Tukson escaping his canon fate, combined with Blake being more focused on the Arthra crew, means that the White Fang rally turns into a full-fledged riot, with quite a few Innocent Bystanders getting hurt.
- While the TSAB's presence is for the most part a net benefit to everyone who isn't a villain, they do inadvertently cause one spectacularly awful instance of the butterfly effect: they showed up right at the start of volume 2 and were such a big distraction for Team RWBY that Blake was convinced not to follow up with her investigation of Torchwick and the White Fang on the grounds that helping the "refugees" settle in was more important. Twenty chapters later, the Breach goes off exactly as planned, right when Cinder wants it to. Civilian casualties are in the thousands by the time the Wolkenritter arrive to clean up the mess.
- Fountain of Youth: In order to properly pull off the New Transfer Student look convincingly, Signum, Zafira, and Shamal are forced to make themselves younger. Works the other way for Vita, however.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: When Cinder requests reinforcements from Salem, the teams are split between several crises happening simultaneously:
- Fate, Arf and Team RWBY are on Patch helping to deal with a freak hurricane and Grimm attack.
- Chrono, Amy and Team JNPR are sent to rescue Team CFVY who are stranded by one of the CCTS support towers and under attack by Grimm.
- The Wolkenritter are in Vale dealing with an attack by the White Fang in a fleet of Paladins.
- Nanoha, Hayate, Yuuno and Lindy are at Beacon attempting to transport Amber's half of the Fall Maiden's power to a more secure location when they are attacked by Cinder.
- From Bad to Worse: Salem summoning Jormungand during the Siege of Vale counts as one example all on its own, but then the dragon from volume 3 decides to join the fun too.Chrono: “Are you kidding me?!”
- Genre Savvy: Torchwick sees how the winds are blowing, knows that "High Yield" and co are friends with Ruby and that Cinder is getting in over her head, and is rapidly edging towards getting the hell out of dodge.
- Going Down with the Ship: Gil winds up going down with the Warding Gesture. Justified in this case in that Remnant's anti-magic field prevents the ship's autopilot from working during reentry, so someone has to stay with the ship in order to steer it to its target.
- Gratuitous Japanese: The Aces and the Wolkenritter occasionally slip into this or use Japanese Honorifics among themselves, but in their case it's a Justified Trope because they're all native Japanese speakers either by birth or by adoption. Nobody else shares this habit, and Emerald and Mercury hang a lampshade on the oddness of it when reporting on the "refugees" to Cinder.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Just like canon, Salem is this on Remnant.
- The Grim Reaper: Invoked. The first time Nanoha lays eyes on Ruby she's critically injured, nearly out of magic, and surrounded by grimm. So when a pale figure dressed in blood red and bearing a massive scythe shows up, Nanoha quite understandably goes Oh, Crap! for a moment before Ruby reveals that she's here to help.
- Heel–Face Turn: Torchwick and Neo throw in with the TSAB after meeting Aria and Lotte and coming to the conclusion that Cinder doesn't have the biggest stick anymore.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Gil crashes the Warding Gesture into Jormungand after evacuating all hands except himself. Played with a bit, in that the ship wasn't what killed the dragon, it was the Orbital Bombardment that followed it. Gil's strategy was to force the other observation ships to intervene in order to ensure the Warding Gesture's wreckage wouldn't be captured by hostile forces. Actually played with twice over, as Gil didn't actually go down with the ship; he was teleported out in time, however the planet's Anti-Magic field screwed up the spell enough that Gil was left mortally injured by the distorted effects.
- Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Ozpin cheerfully lights this trope on fire and hurls it off a cliff when he begins paying Teams RWBY and JNPR the salaries of fully-trained hunters as a reward for their highly-professional handling of the ongoing "refugee" situation. Not only are they being paid, but they're being paid overtime, shift differentials, and hazard pay for an ongoing job with no set endpoint, meaning they've been on the clock twenty-four/seven for over a month, which adds up to a whole lot of money. This is especially noteworthy for Weiss, because it neatly resolves her financial dependence on her father, turning her into a Self-Made Woman in one fell swoop.
- I Control My Minions Through...: Cinder has a variety of methods to control her minions:
- Torchwick is kept in line through Cinder having the Bigger Stick and willingness to use it on anyone who gets in her way. This eventually backfires when Roman uncovers the TSAB's presence on Remnant and decides that they have a much bigger stick, leading him to double-cross Cinder and throw his lot in with the Bureau.
- Emerald is kept in line with a combination of Authority, Fear, Loyalty, and Power. This also backfires when Cinder's own actions begin to starve Emerald of affection and Mercury's ruthlessness makes her question her loyalties at the same time that she's forming a tentative respect/friendship with Yuuno.
- Mercury seems mostly in it for Power and Sadism and is so far the least likely of all of Cinder's minions to change.
- Important Haircut: Weiss cuts her hair short just before her confrontation with her father.
- Improbably Female Cast: Comes with being a RWBY and Lyrical Nanoha crossover.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Summer Rose faked her death and vanished into hiding with Raven after inheriting the Winter Maiden's power, knowing that if her identity was ever discovered by the previous Maiden's murderers, they would target Yang and Ruby to get to her.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At one point in the dance arc, Nora alludes to the shipping plans she and Hayate have been making to pair the students up with each other. The fact that all of Hayate's plans just so happen to be named after various
Idiosyncratic Ship Names doesn't quite qualify for this trope, but the fact that everyone present knows without being told which ships involve them does.Ruby: "You d-don't have anything planned for me, do you?"Nora: "Weeeeeell... It really depends on who's taken and who's not as things go along. There's Operation Nuts and Dolts-"Ruby: "What."Nora: "-and Operation Ladybug-"Blake: "What."Nora: "-and Operation Milk and Cereal-"Ruby and Pyrrha: "What?!" - Lighter and Softer: Than RWBY canon, but more or less par for the course for Nanoha canon. The first half of the story is focused on character development more than fighting villains with world domination plots. While Cerebus Syndrome kicks in eventually around the time the dance arc wraps up, it doesn't kick nearly as hard as RWBY Volume 3 did. In fact, with Summer's unexpected return the number of named character deaths is now at -1.
- Look What I Can Do Now!: Magical Girl Lyrical Ruby is briefly able to hold off the Summer Maiden via flight magic and hit-and-run tactics despite being badly injured. While she's eventually defeated anyway, the trope is still played straight in that she bought enough time for The Cavalry to arrive.
- Love Epiphany: Jaune finally gets smacked upside the head with a clue-by-four after being prompted to piece a few things together on his own.
- Magic A Is Magic A: It's established early in the story that Aura and Semblances are a form of magical power expressed by a person's Linker Core and the Awakening ritual, which is explained in a post on the Spacebattles forum as being a sort of "imaginary Device", like a waterwheel implanted in the flow of a person's magical energy, siphoning off magical power from the Core into a secondary "mana pool". This allows anyone with a Linker Core to have an Aura, even if they lack the magical strength to become a mage.
- Magic Knight: The Wolkenritter in particular.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Cardin lost his left arm to a Paladin during the Breach. As soon as the stump had been bandaged off, he started operating a trolley to help feed people who were more seriously injured.Cardin: "My feet work fine and they're shorthanded as it is. Might as well lend the one I have left."
- Mama Bear: Over a decade of Faking the Dead has done nothing to prevent Summer Rose from being this if her children are being threatened.
- Mildly Military: Both the various Huntsmen and TSAB members, though given the first contact situation the TSAB step up a notch.
- The trope is actually discussed between Ozpin and Lindy early in the story. Lindy, being closer to traditional military than Oz, is not entirely comfortable with the free-range nature of Vale's Huntsmen and the potential for abuse in power without oversight. Ozpin justifies it by saying that human nature can be as petty as it is noble, and alone or in small groups, Huntsmen aren't seen as a threat which prevents them from becoming a source of fear and distrust and thereby attracting the Grimm. This is a nod to the argument he has with Ironwood over the Atlas military's presence at the Vytal Festival in volumes 2 and 3.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Mercury's biggest problem. Upon finding out Arf has found about his mechanical legs and caught them almost mid-murder in Tukson's bookstore, he immediately moves to planning her murder. Emerald calls him out on how exactly he plans to Make It Look Like an Accident when Aura users are essentially immune to injuries from things like slipping in the shower or falling down a flight of stairs. He then does this again later in the story, aiming a crashing Bullhead into a population center as a distraction. Emerald tricks him with her illusions to avoid getting any Innocent Bystanders hurt.
- Mythology Gag: Deliberately averted. Team RWBY's fight with Adam and the White Fang almost starts off with Yang charging in head-first and getting maimed, except Blake tackles her out of the way.
- Necessarily Evil: During the Amity Colosseum meeting, Salem, the Black Queen of the Grimm paints herself as this with good reasons.
- Not So Above It All:
- Glynda is something of a Pungeon Master when the mood takes her. When it does, even Yang is impressed.
- As a consequence of the Wolkenritter altering their physical structures to better imitate flesh-and-blood bodies, Signum begins suffering the effects of her new teenage body's hormones. The trope is downplayed in this case in that she bears them as stoically and analytically as anything else, but she does acknowledge them to be a factor in her unexpected interest in Neptune.
- General Ironwood might be the leader of the Atlas military as well as an academy headmaster, but once he got a Device in his hand to verify that Aura is a form of magic, he was like a kid who got a new toy for Christmas.
- Official Couple: Nanoha and Fate are in the story and in their pre-StrikerS relationship (which they explicitly acknowledge as being a romantic relationship). White Rose is also made canon at the end of the dance arc.
- Opposing Combat Philosophies: The TSAB cast's preferred method of fighting things is to fly away and then Beam Spam or Wave-Motion Gun it into next week. For various reasons, this is not available to them, so they take up the Remnant style of combat. While there are some grumbles about the lack of flight magic, they adapt pretty well.
- Early on, it's Ruby, of all people, who gives the mages a brief lecture about combat on Remnant and how their use of Non-Lethal Warfare is admirable but also a completely wasted effort against the Grimm.
- Original Character: Several of these make appearances with varying levels of importance, including Arthra crew member Sentra Lockheed, reformed White Fang agents Kasta and Xerxes, and Briar Breeze, Yasmine, Holika, and Bronze, Salem's pet Maidens and their respective sidekicks.
- Passing the Torch: Downplayed in that the hero passing the torch is only going on a 10-Minute Retirement. Fate's injuries during the Battle of Patch damage her Linker Core and require her to step down from active duty while she recovers. In the meantime she loans Bardiche to Ruby, allowing Ruby to continue taking her first steps as a magical girl.
- Person of Mass Destruction:
- Obviously Nanoha and Hayate, but in this story there's also Sentra, an OC mage who was part of the Artha's combat team, who is Lindy's secondary bombardment specialist and manages to freak Neo out when she infiltrates the hanger. Neo doesn't know the TSAB choose to operate primarily with Non-Lethal Warfare magic, so it seemed to her that "High Yield" was willing to retaliate to a stabbing with a massive disintegrating Wave-Motion Gun.
- Hayate demonstrates why she is the queen of this trope in chapter 30. A single casting of Diabolic Emission annihilates an entire army of Grimm and can be seen visually by the TSAB's observation ships. In orbit.
- Phantom Zone: The traditional TSAB Barrier pulls in both magic users and people with active Auras. For example, one is put up to limit the collateral damage done when hunting for Neo, another is quickly put up when it becomes obvious the fight between Signum and Winter is going to escalate.
- Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Vita, in order to blend in with the locals, goes from Token Mini-Moe Cute Bruiser to a teenager.
- Power Incontinence:
- Stupendously-huge concentrations of mana have the odd side-effect of automatically triggering the Semblances of any Aura-users in the area while simultaneously supercharging them. When Team RWBY is approaching the Arthra's crash site, for example, Ruby has a brief freakout when she suddenly realizes that she can't turn off her Super-Speed. It also has the nasty affect of inducing growth in nearby Grimm as well, turning a bunch of Beowolves into their Alpha versions; luckily, this is only a physical change, and the new Alphas are still only as smart as the regular versions.
- Summer Rose is unable to turn off the glow from her eyes, and while she does wear a blindfold light still seeps around the edges. While she is in full control of her Maiden powers, being unable to turn her eyes off means that she can be easily identified as such.
- Putting the Band Back Together: While the actual reunion process happens offscreen, we see that as of chapter 29, Team STRQ has been reassembled. Including the supposedly deceased Summer Rose.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Ozpin and Lindy stand out, but pretty much every authority figure on Team Good is one. Despite Ozpin's initial concerns, when Ironwood is brought up to speed on the situation, he proves to be perfectly reasonable too.
- Related in the Adaptation: Played with in that we don't know Roman and Neo's canonical relationship. Here, she's his niece.
- Relationship Upgrade: Jaune and Pyrrha get pushed together by circumstances, prompting Weiss (and Ruby) finally admit their feelings for each other.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: An inverted example. Bastion is a benevolent splinter faction, made up of former White Fang members like Tukson who feel that Adam's extremism is doing more harm than good to the Faunus' rights movement.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Torchwick's initial response to uncovering the TSAB's presence on Remnant can be summed up as this. He doesn't have the full story except that there's a hanger full of military-looking guys who can fly and shoot doom lasers, he doesn't want to know any more than that, and he's not going to tell anyone and thus give them a reason to come looking for him. He also pointedly doesn't tell Cinder anything because he knows she'll make him investigate further.
- Salem's ultimate response to the TSAB can be read as this. Though she has experience with Belkans, these new forces are an Outside-Context Problem. She pulls back after they appear in force, with the intention of waiting and observing.
- Sherlock Scan: General Ironwood took one look at the Arthra crew and asked Ozpin why trained soldiers were pretending to be academy students.
- Shipper on Deck:
- Nora and Hayate go absolutely bonkers with this trope during the dance arc, and embark on a quest to pair up everyone in Beacon with everyone else.
- Of all the people in the world this trope could apply to, it's Signum who notices Pyrrha pining over Jaune and subtly nudges them together.
- Shout-Out: The Arthra uses dimensional pockets to store more mechanical components than its volume can contain. This prompts a conversation between Weiss and Yuuno:
- During a Body-Count Competition between Pyrrha and Signum, Hayate chimed in when one of them killed a particularly large Ursa.
Hayate: "That still only counts as one!" - Small Role, Big Impact: Tukson. After surviving Emerald and Mercury's murder attempt, he flees and drops out of sight completely... but not before informing some allies in the White Fang of just what Cinder's minions were up to, leading to a faction with doubts about Adam Taurus and his methods breaking away from the terrorist group. He returns again later in the story and has another role, this time preventing Emerald from being killed off just as she was about to commit to a Heel–Face Turn.
- Spanner in the Works: The Arthra's crew wind up being a whole ship full of these collectively thrown into Cinder's plans all at the same time.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Lots of them. In truth, there has yet to be a single named character death in the entire story.
- Tukson is saved from Mercury and Emerald by Yuuno and Arf showing up on a book-hunting trip at just the right time.
- Amber is saved when Shamal's healing magic manages to extract the broken piece of the Fall Maiden's power from her Linker Core, which both saves her from wasting away on life support and also removes her from Cinder's cross-hairs.
- Penny, Pyrrha, Torchwick, and Yang's arm are all spared from the events of volume 3, thanks to Cinder's plans for the Vytal Festival being massively derailed by the TSAB's unexpected involvement.
- Summer. Rose. That is all.
- Spit Take: Qrow spits a mouthful of brandy all over Lindy upon seeing a picture of Emerald and Mercury, due to recognizing them as two of the people who attacked Amber over a year ago.
- Super-Empowering: Bardiche grants Ruby guest user access during the battle on Patch when Fate is out of commission and Crescent Rose is shattered, allowing her to turn into a bona fide magical girl to save her team.
- Taking You with Me: Played with. When Pyrrha is struggling to take Cinder alive, she calls in nonlethal fire support from Nanoha and then pins Cinder in a grapple so both of them get Befriended.
- Tempting Fate: Nora soaks a lightning bolt at one point and dares her opponent to hit her again. She does, but not with lightning.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted, in a sense. When Ruby and Weiss start showing symptoms of mental trauma after the White Fang riot, Port immediately calls up Ozpin and recommends that they be enrolled in one of the fourth-year classes, Hunter Ethics: Actions and Consequences, to help them cope.
- Threesome Subtext: Blake eventually chooses goes to the dance with both Yang and Sun due to Hayate and Nora's shenanigans, much to the latter two's surprise."...trios will be trio'd?"
- Took a Level in Badass: Amy takes one after her Aura is unlocked, allowing her to step up and support Chrono and the rest of her team on the front lines. Jaune also makes enormous progress in getting up to speed with the rest of his teammates, thanks to Pyrrha and Signum's joint training efforts. And Ruby becomes a bona fide Magical Girl with Bardiche's assistance during the Breach.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Cardin gets the rough edges of his personality ground down a fair bit by certain events during and after the Breach.
- Translation Convention: Zigzagged. The TSAB characters speak whatever their universal language is at first, but first contact with the Remnantites requires the use of devices as Translator Microbes (prompting Ruby to squee briefly when she realizes she's being subtitled). Evidently the language of Remnant is a dialect of Al Hazardi, and once the introductions are done everyone switches over to speaking in that language instead.
- Traumatic Haircut: Defied. Blake and Yang both lose their hair as part of their injuries during the Breach, but Shamal's healing magic is able to regrow it, although they have to spend a chapter or two with less than usual (Blake winds up with a short pixie cut, and Yang is left with a big golden mop on top of her head). Weiss wasn't as badly singed, so she only has to cut her hair off a bit shorter – but this does mean she's wearing a different look when she finally has her confrontation with her father.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Outside of Nanoha being a member of the cast, the Arthra is packing primary weapons that are not to be fired either on or at planets.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 29, complete with plenty of Shocking Moments. Followed immediately by chapter 30, which if anything pours on the HSQ even harder.
- Wham Line:
- "I am Briar Breeze, the Maiden of Summer."
- Salem: "Belkans..."
- White Flag: Salem arrives at the Vytal Summit on the back of a giant nevermore carrying a giant flag of truce in its claws.
- Wizards from Outer Space: Gets a raised eyebrow from pretty much every Remnant-dweller who hears it, however they generally accept the claim once it's proven to them.
- Worf Had the Flu:
- Signum zigzags this trope. She gets semi-seriously injured by Banesaw during the White Fang riot, but on the other hand she then turned around and thrashed him hard enough to send him running for his life. It would have gone much worse for him, though, if she hadn't been adapting to a new younger body and using Aura powers instead of her Belkan magic and Device. They meet again in chapter 30, and this time Signum doesn't have the flu. Banesaw goes splat.
- The Aces also suffer from this during the fights in chapters 29 and 30: they had spent the last few days leading up to those events taking turns powering the seals on the Fall Maiden's mantle in order to stop it from zipping away to its other half with Cinder. As a result, Nanoha, Yuuno, Fate, and Hayate are all operating on about half of their total reserves and a lack of sleep when Cinder and company make their move.
- The World Is Not Ready: TSAB First Contact procedures necessitate this, but it's especially important on Remnant because the panic that would ensue from such a revelation would rile up the Grimm on a worldwide scale.
- Whole-Plot Reference: In a sense, the story's overall narrative follows the same general structure of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S. Early on it is primarily defined by character interaction and development between the casts of RWBY and Nanoha, punctuated by occasional skirmishes with the agents of a mysterious enemy lurking in the shadows. After several complete arcs, Cerebus Syndrome kicks in when the villain reveals their hand and successfully acquires their objective from the heroes despite their best efforts.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Pulled off by Cinder, of all people, to throw off suspicion after her failed assassination of Amber.
- Wrecked Weapon: Poor Crescent Rose...its blade was completely destroyed by Briar Breeze.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Despite the many wrenches the TSAB’s arrival has thrown into her plan, Cinder has so far managed to come out of it pretty much personally unscathed by being quick to adapt to changing circumstances.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: Even with all the wrenches that get thrown into her plans throughout the first act of the story, Cinder's ability to improvise and change her plans on the fly ultimately allows her to claim the Fall Maiden's mantle despite the best efforts of the heroes. They do, however, get to blow her up almost immediately afterwards.
- You Have Failed Me: Salem is shown having Cinder's predecessor torn limb from limb by the Grimm for failing to locate one of the Maidens in a flashback.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Emerald isn't quite circumspect enough about her wavering loyalties to escape Mercury's notice, and after one incident too many he maims her and leaves her for dead. Subverted, however, in that she's saved afterwards... by Tukson, of all people.
- Your Magic's No Good Here: Remnant has a distortion field around it similar to low-grade AMF which disrupts complex magical spells such as remote-guided shooting spells, flight magic, and dimensional transfers, making them prohibitively difficult to control even for an expert and ensuring that the TSAB characters can't simply teleport home or call for backup. The trope is also played with in that the characters study the field and are eventually able to adapt their devices and other technology to compensate for the distortion to a degree.
