Jaune was tired of losing - tired of giving up whenever he felt he wasn't good enough. It was time to prove to himself, and everyone else, that he belonged at Beacon, and that he has what it took to be a Huntsman. The Vytal Tournament was coming up, but he wasn't just going to compete. He was going to win.
Summary from Fanfiction.net
Tournament Arc is a RWBY Alternate Universe / Adaptation Expansion Fanfic written by ImSoAwesome
centered around a heavily altered Vytal Tournament. The story focuses on Jaune's struggles to win the tournament round by round while slowly changing and challenging the perceptions of everyone around him. It also gives heavy doses of Character Development to established and background characters alike. It initially borrows many elements from My Hero Academia before going on its own direction.
The fic can be found here.
In December 2021 and after the cancellation of Redemption Arc, another sequel, titled The Second Year (TV Tropes page here), was made available.
This story provides examples of:
- Always Second Best: Arslan is this. She is noted as the second strongest fighter of the 1st years, and always loses to Pyrrha. This is even lampshaded by Arslan herself in Chapter 11.
- Arch-Enemy: Pyrrha to Jaune, especially after chapter 19. The conflict between Jaune and Pyrrha becomes entirely personal, where the tournament itself is no longer the goal, but the confirmation of their personal beliefs, which hinge on them defeating each other to prove their life philosophies not only to each other, but to themselves.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Arslan is introduced as this. She's a walking, talking ball of anger issues and an Inferiority Superiority Complex due to being Always Second Best to Pyrrha. One of her first appearances has her utterly demolish Jaune in sparring match, so when she loses first place to him right on the finish line of the Obstacle Course, she takes it as well as you'd expect. Her own teammates call her out on this and she attempts to become a better sport and rebuild her bridges with Jaune and Pyrrha. Later on, she's one of the first characters to have come to truly respect Jaune.
- Be All My Sins Remembered: Pyrrha publicly confesses everything wrong she did throughout her life on worldwide live television and announces her temporary retirement and going into treatment as a form of atonement.
- Berserk Button: Yang, Arslan, and Pyrrha. Yang does not like when people mess with her hair. Arslan loathes losing to Pyrrha and Jaune early on. Pyrrha cannot stand even the idea of failure, to such an extent that she is willing to sacrifice sleep and social interaction just to work herself to exhaustion.
- The Berserker: Arslan. She becomes much more erratic and destructive when angry.
- Birds of a Feather:
- Jaune and Pyrrha: They're very close by the begining of the story, but their relationship slowly degradates when Jaune wins the first preliminary and ask Velvet to train him seriously. From there, a mix between jealous, envy, possessiveness and superiority/inferiority complex throws Pyrrha into a spiral that culminates with them becoming bitter rivals. Despite all the strain, Pyrrha admits to herself she really loves him and it's at least implied it's mutuous, but both are still too hurt to even take a step. The possibility of relink their bond is left open
- Jaune and Velvet. Second to Pyrrha, Jaune's master-student-friend relationship with Velvet is one of the main points in the story.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pyrrha. Her well known kind smile and behaviour hide a tremendous ego and entitlement complex underneath. When Arslan, her inseparable friend from her Sanctum days, started getting better at combat to the point of coming close to defeating her, she retaliated by bullying her relentlessly to the point of her agents bribing her empoverished mother to keep quiet in exchange for a better life when things start getting out of hand. She's also fully aware of this and she hates it, and thus sees Jaune as her opportunity to prove she's not the horrible person she and others perceive her to be. Her mask starts breaking after he gets better at combat without her help to the point of defeating Yang. Velvet sees right through this facade from day one.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jaune wins the Vytal Tournament and goes into an exchange program with the other three Huntsmen academies for the remainder of the year as a prize while Pyrrha is slowly coming onto herself and rebuilding the bridges she broke with Arslan and the rest of the students, but she has to also leave Beacon for the rest of the year to start psychological treatment, her relationship with Jaune is broken to the point where they decide to break off all forms of contact with each other at least for the time being, Nora and Ren remain alone in Beacon while Jaune has to leave behind all of his friends, and Yang's feelings are unrequited in the end.
- Break the Haughty:
- What Weiss' character arc consists of. In the beginning she has a tendency to look down on people she perceives as inferior and a refusal to accept any change in the status quo. She gives Jaune no respect and no acknowledgement of his growing fighting prowess to the point of stating she wouldn't care if he killed himself, until his words of defiance during the second preliminary round start haunting her and mess with her focus on her training with Winter. By the month between the third preliminary and the KO rounds she has to watch everyone reap the fruits of their training while she's left behind because of her mental block. Then, just when she's begun to overcome it, Jaune lays the verbal smackdown on her after snapping and she has her own hypocrisy rubbed on her face by Pyrrha herself. This shakes her so much, she goes straight into a BSoD after finding out Ruby is her opponent in the round of 16 due to the parallels with Jaune and Pyrrha's situation. She ends up losing despite managing to snap out of it and almost turning the fight around with her Shield Knight summon. The fact that Shield Knight happens to be a copy of Jaune becomes a constant reminder of her mistakes and in the end, after realizing she came this close to becoming a second Pyrrha, she resolves to become a better person and Huntress than she was before.
- This also happens to Pyrrha after losing the final. She enters a state of delusion while her public image crashes down and bursts into flames because of her words and attitude during the match to the extent she starts losing fans and almost no one in Beacon wants anything to do with her anymore. After a scummy student lays her down verbally to provoke her into attacking him and Jaune rejects her apology attempt on the grounds of it being insincere and her not having learned anything, she hits rock bottom and attempts to end her life on the same rooftop she used to train with Jaune. Weiss makes the save before tragedy strikes.
- Broken Ace: Pyrrha, in spades. On the outside, Pyrrha tries to maintain her public self-image of being the perfect girl, while on the inside she struggles with a handful of personal issues such as self-loathing, an entitlement and superiority complex and parental issues.
- Broken Pedestal: Jaune has stated to have always admired Pyrrha and Team RWBY for being everything he isn't in combat and school. Learning that Yang and Weiss never believed he'd amount to anything in Beacon and thought he'd always be the loser at the bottom of the food chain left him disappointed and upset and having Pyrrha lay out to him how she had used him to validate herself while verbally tearing him apart broke him so thoroughly he immediately snapped, lashed out against Yang, Weiss and himself and left Beacon indefinitely in heartbreak while the rest of their teammates, Velvet and ABRN watched stupefied.
- The Bully: Pyrrha is revealed to have been this to Arslan in the past.
- Can't Catch Up: Averted hard with Jaune. In the beginning of the story, Jaune is at the same place he is at canon Volume 2, with the only thing going for him being his smarts and Velvet instructing him in hand to hand combat alongside Aura control akin to Full Cowl. After the one month timeskip and having unlocked his Semblance he's jumped leaps and bounds from where he was in the beginning and set the foundations of his own fighting style.
- Casanova Wannabe: Oh, boy, Jaune. He mostly doesn't expect it work or uses it to fool around with his friends or fool female oponents. Unknown to him, it actually works.
- Chaste Hero: Played with. For all his flirt, Jaune doesn't actively search for romance and directs his focus to be a better fighter, despite he develops a close friendship with Velvet and Yang (who Jaune ultimately sees just as a friend). On the other hand, it's insinuated his feelings for Pyrrha were/are more than friendship. When he's drunken on a pub, Jaune hallucinates he's dancing with her on a stage.
- Chick Magnet: Downplayed, since just two of them are insinuated as romantic, but Jaune have lots of moments with the girls.
- Jaune and Pyrrha's relationship was the same that in the canon, but when Pyrrha's ego get out of control, it becomes a bitter rivalry, where Pyrrha's feelings for Jaune become twisted. By the time she finally put herself together, it turns out she genuinely loves Jaune.
- Yang is played straight (ironically, considering the canon). It becomes a point of her character make peaces with what are her feelings for Jaune. She also mentions there's two girls crushing on Jaune, one being Yang herself. Whether she's talking about Pyrrha or Velvet or someone else is anyone's guess.
- Velvet is mainly his mentor, friend and confident, but she can alternate between a strict snarky master and something as an overzealous girlfriend at a drop of a hat. She's the one who suffers the most seeing Jaune's fights and is the closest to him in the story.
- Blake (who's not actually in love, but truly believes he's her admirer) and Coco (who's everything but crazy) are strictly Played for Laughs.
- Combat Pragmatist: Jaune, full stop. Justified, as in the beginning he's hopelessly outclassed by the rest of his peers so he has to claw, scrape and do whatever he must to attempt to secure a victory.
- Dare to Be Badass:
- Jaune refuses to enter the Vytal Tournament in the beginning despite Pyrrha's pleas because he finds no point in trying if he knows he is going to lose, no matter how many times he gets up. It takes a talk with Roman Torchwick of all people about how he'd stay in the same miserable place he is in at that moment if he doesn't even put a sincere attempt to convince him to not only enter the tournament, but to win it.
- Roman reappears and does it again when Jaune is at his lowest, even though this time he deals some harsh truths about how his dependence on external validation makes him more pathetic than when he met him the first time. When Jaune realizes how liberating it was to finally be able to grow and triumph after putting so much effort and how stupid it would be to hand the tournament on a silver platter, he decides to go back and take what's his.
- Defeat Means Respect:
- Averted in the beginning, and it's also the main point of conflict in this story. Jaune winning the Obstacle Course is received with negative backlash by some, with Weiss, Yang, Arslan and even Pyrrha being miffed that the weakest student in Beacon managed to beat them in the race. Played straight for the rest of the characters, as someone like Jaune continuously showing the tenacity and willpower to want to win no matter the odds and managing to defeat Yang, someone incredibly above his level, by the skin of his teeth makes everyone eventually want to fight him in the tournament.
- Yang has to do a good amount of self searching after Weiss calls her out on the hypocrisy of trying to convince herself she felt good for his friend while truthfully being upset that Beacon's scrub beat her and everyone else by grabbing a fistful of her hair. After coming to terms with her thoughts and feelings she decides to leave her past self behind by cutting her own hair and ends fighting and losing to Jaune in the third preliminary round, by which point she has managed to change her tune completely. After the time skip, she develops a crush on him.
- Weiss is the one person in the main cast who looks down on Jaune the most. She respects him so little she states she wouldn't care if he killed himself after the second round. By that point, though, she starts having more trouble trying to pull off her summoning due to his words on the second round getting to her and making her gradually go from cold dismissal to fear and then to the same obsession to fight him as everyone else. Of all the main characters, the one who thought of him the worst is the only one who doesn't get to fight him one on one.
- Defeating the Undefeatable: It takes every drop of effort in his body, but Jaune manages to defeat Pyrrha in the final. Played with, as she surrenders before he can deal the final blow.
- Determinator:
- Every main character is one, but the focus goes to Jaune. What makes this special is that his grit, tenacity and determination to succeed are so big that they start infecting everyone around him to also pushing themselves to the limit in their training and fighting. In the final, despite being against unsurmontable odds, Jaune powers through to his last legs, destroys Superbia's twelve sub-spears with his bare hands and gives Pyrrha the pummeling she so thoroughly deserved. This trait scares Pyrrha so much she forfeits the match.
- Deconstructed with Pyrrha. She is such a perfectionist that she starts forgoing human contact and sleep in favor of training and crafting a new weapon so that she may secure victory at the Vytal Tournament, causing no small amounts of worry to her own teammates.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Jaune, after defeating Yang one on one in the third round.
- Did You Think I Can't Feel?: Jaune, after hitting his Rage Breaking Point in chapter 19, unleashes a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech on Yang, Weiss and himself regarding their opinion of him before and during the tournament.
- Double-Meaning Title: The fic's title, Tournament Arc, refers both to Jaune Arc competing in a tournament and the fact that the story itself is a shonen classic story arc.
- Easily Forgiven:
- Played with regarding Yang. When she and Jaune have their conversation after the third round and she apologizes for what she said and thought of him beforehand, she expects him to hate her and give her the cold shoulder. Jaune instead makes her earn her forgiveness by helping train him in close combat for the next round. After Pyrrha's Breaking Speech she's on the receiving end of Jaune's verbal lashing, even though by that point she was the one who deserved it the least. Discussed when both make amends after the round of 16 and conclude that he forgave her too quickly and he should have been more honest both wih her and himself.
- Also played with regarding Arslan. When the former approached Jaune with the intent of trying to make amends for how she behaved, he responded as one would expect in the same situation. Yet later, both of them being similar has them striking a healthier rivalry bordering on Odd Friendship.
- Averted with Weiss. It takes Winter's pleading for Jaune to even listen to what she has to say, and even then he does not forgive her at all. She pledges to become a better person and Huntress immediately after, by which point he reveals he doesn't close himself to the possibility.
- Also averted with Pyrrha. By that point Jaune is too hurt, angry and not willing to invest his emotions on her, and Pyrrha herself can't fully grasp the dimension of what she did. Played with, though, in that Jaune made sure long before the final that Pyrrha had someone else to help her back on her feet and give her some tough love if it was necessary.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: During the entire final match, Pyrrha stubbornly believes Jaune is out to destroy the only good thing she has going for her out of spite. She grows increasingly more unhinged with every passing second to the point of being downright scared when Jaune refuses to yield despite being down for the count and after beating the crap out of her. Even after her parents console her, she refuses to believe their words.
- Evil Weapon: Superbia, a black spear crafted by Pyrrha. Lampshaded when Jaune sees the weapon with his own eyes and comments how its unnatural form seems to draw the worst in the person who wields it.
- Expy: Where do we begin. Nearly every main character (and some side characters) start off as an expy of a My Hero Academia character:
- Jaune, to Izuku.
- Velvet, to Gran Torino.
- Arslan, to Bakugou.
- Weiss, to Todoroki and Bakugou, according to the author.
- Scarlet, to Monoma.
- Flynt, to Inasa.
- Pyrrha, to Bakugou, specifically to his proud and vindictive side. And it's not played for laughs.
- False Friend: Yang and Pyrrha, to Jaune. Played with regarding Weiss, as she and Jaune were never really friends in the first place. Every case is Played for Drama.
- Fan of Underdog:
- Jaune gets one in Ethan, a boy from Vale who became his fan after watching him in the first two preliminary rounds. When Jaune is at his lowest point and thought to have quit the tournament, Ethan and his mom are unknowingly part of the people who help him get back on his feet.
- Velvet is this in spades, to the point where she wants to see him triumph so badly she is left distraught at the idea of Jaune quitting the tournament because of Pyrrha's hypocrisy. It's also strongly hinted that she develops romantic feelings for him.
- Professor Goodwitch is revealed to be this in the end, even before the beginning of the story. She made sure Jaune was accepted into Beacon despite his forget transcripts.
- Flashback: Flashbacks are used quite heavily throughout Tournament Arc, delving into past events that are key to current plot points or character backstories. To such an extent it is practically a second story under the main plot.
- Foil:
- Jaune and Pyrrha, obviously. Jaune is the runt of the litter, Pyrrha is a Born Winner prodigy. Jaune continuously defies everyone's set expectations, Pyrrha believes in a destined path in life. Jaune wears his heart on his sleeve, Pyrrha hides her true manipulative self behind a mask. Their personalities are even reflected in their Semblances; while Jaune amplifies and pushes everyone forward, Pyrrha has a two-fold magnetic personality, attracting everyone to her, and pushing them away after showing her true colors.
- Pyrrha and Arslan. Pyrrha behaves in a kind mannered way, while Arslan externalizes her anger continuously. Pyrrha was born a prodigy, while Arslan had to scratch her way to the top. Pyrrha has pursued Jaune's affection since before the story, while Arslan belittles him for perceiving him as trash. Pyrrha used to be a bully, while Arslan was her victim. Pyrrha was eventually revealed to be an egomaniac manipulator and reverted back to her old ways, while Arslan moved past her issues and grew to be a better person. Pyrrha threw her relationship with Jaune away, while Arslan became the person who respected Jaune the most.
- Freudian Excuse: Pyrrha's inability to control her ego comes from both of her parents' radically different ways of raising her, with her father being the stern figure she could never appease and her mother praising her for every little thing she did. This has also burdened her with a metric ton of identity issues and self hatred so large she herself believes nobody loves her by her, so she has to settle with falling back into being the Invincible Girl, with every little bad thing she does in the course of the story leaving her in a far worse place emotionally. Pushing Jaune away by telling him the truth about their partnership while forcefully preying on his insecurities leaves her so emotionally wrecked she considers herself to be beyond forgiveness.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Jaune defeats Arslan by supercharging her Semblance and having her own explosion backfire on her.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Many chapters either allude to, use the lyrics, or the title, of a song.
- Interrupted Suicide: Weiss foils Pyrrha's suicide attempt after the latter's sanity breaks apart.
- Kick the Dog: Pyrrha breaks Nora's leg with Magnhild in their round of 16 fight.
- Manipulative Bastard: Pyrrha. In chapter 13, it is revealed that Pyrrha's reasoning for choosing Jaune as a partner was because she wanted to control him. She kept Jaune's secrets, lied to him about his combat improvements, and overall coddled his emotions so he'd love and worship her. And it works. Even when Pyrrha refuses to speak to him and Jaune's friends continue to warn him that Pyrrha is not the person he thinks she is, he adamantly defends her and does not concede to the truth until he hears it from Pyrrha herself.
- Meaningful Name: Pyrrha's new weapon, Superbia, is Latin for 'Pride'. Thus Jaune breaking it with his own hands is akin to him shattering her own arrogance, hubris and superiority complex.
- Mirror Character:
- Jaune and Arslan. Both of them started combat school without even basic notions of Aura control and combat proficiency and also both of them were associated with Pyrrha, being her closest friend in Beacon and Sanctum respectively. Both of them were also betrayed by her when they started becoming better at combat because Pyrrha had such an inflated ego and sense of determinism she started feeling threatened by them.
- Pyrrha, to Cinder. During her quarterfinal match she starts showing traits similar to Cinder from the canon series, such as presenting herself to the audience with a fake smile, unnecessarily toying with her opponent before going for the kill, being able to transform her weapon into smaller metal particles and reshaping it at will in a similar way to Cinder's canon Semblance and spiting Velvet, who is watching in the audience, by transforming Superbia into a scythe while looking at her directly. There's also her deterministic belief in Destiny and the lot of everyone in life being handed down to them and unchangeable.
- Mutual Envy: Jaune and Ruby. Jaune envies and respects Ruby and his other friends because of how amazing their combat abilities are. Ruby admits to envying Jaune's determination and desire to always keep trying, as she tends give up at doing things she feels she can't get good at, like hand-to-hand combat.
- My God, What Have I Done?: It's implied Pyrrha's Breaking Speech to Jaune wasn't only to break his spirit. She purposely revealed what did their partnership initially mean to her, so she could rid off any more distraction and give full focus to the tournament. Right after that and days after the tournament, Pyrrha rests destroyed that she pushed away the person she mostly cares and she doesn't know if she can even have Jaune back, after all she did. She admits in television live that she can't even confess her true feelings for Jaune because of all that happened.
- One-Man Army: Downplayed. In the second round of the Preliminaries, Jaune has to keep hold on his gold headband while fighting off all the other competitors hoping to take it. He rarely defeats anyone in this round (because he realistically can't) but rather fights them off, distracts them, tricks them or runs away to stall for time.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jaune banters and jokes a lot to distract his opponents, a constant trait in many of his fights. By the time he and Pyrrha face off in the finals, Pyrrha becomes increasingly irritated and even terrified that Jaune refuses to say a single word to her. Jaune says exactly one line to her, and that's only when he already have her against the ropes.
- Opposites Attract: Jaune and Pyrrha. Jaune is meek and panicky, but generally kind and has an approachable aura that makes most people like him. Pyrrha is manipulative and prideful and her popularity is tied to her capabilities as a fighter instead of her personality. Jaune is considered a loser, while Pyrrha is a born prodigy. Jaune shows a variety of interests and expansions of personality that progressively draws people to him, while Pyrrha's 'true' personality pushes people away. But they both share personal secrets with each other that they don't with others and often spend time alone together. Despite all she did, she truly loves him and it's implied Jaune feels the same.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: Jaune's most effective tool in combat is his ability to come up with unthinkable, and sometimes insane, tactics to use against specific opponents.
- During the Obstacle Course, Jaune is injured before he can reach the finish line. Desperate, he baits Yang into using a fully semblance powered punch to launch him across the stage, allowing him to stop Weiss and Arslan to secure first place.
- During the second round, among other things, he fakes a love confession towards Blake and attempts to call for a timeout against Pyrrha. The first one backfires hilariously, the second one straight up doesn't work.
- During the third preliminary round, he pulls a United States of Smash and changes the Aura flow to his free arm while being grounded and running on fumes to knock Yang out.
- He calls for a timeout one more time against Cardin in the round of 16. This time, it works.
- He throws his shield up in the air against Ruby in quarterfinals before engaging her one last time. She is knocked out when the shield falls on top of her head.
- He reaches the final by supercharging Arslan's own explosions and letting the backlash knock her unconscious.
- Averted in the final match, as Jaune knows he can't trick Pyrrha after their second preliminary round fight.
- The Perfectionist: Pyrrha. She is a Born Winner, with a strict father always pushing her to improve and a mother, teachers, peers and community that constantly praises her. As a result she puts great effort into her perfect image and the mere thought of losing or failing is unacceptable to her.
- Power Limiter: Arslan reveals she's been wearing one in her round of 16 match against Sage.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Weiss struggles to perform the summon technique after losing her self-confidence and becoming more afraid of Jaune as an opponent. Justified in that her semblance's techniques do rely on stable mental and emotional states.
- Rousing Speech: Torchwick does this to motivate Jaune to enter the tournament in the first place. He does it again after Pyrrha breaks Jaune's spirit.
- Running Gag:
- Coco's "episodes". They also involve her drinking a lot of liquid.
- Blake thinking Jaune has a crush on her after he asks her out during the second round (he only did that to get out from fighting her).
- Sanity Slippage: Pyrrha loses her grasp on reality after losing the tournament final and enters a state of perpetual denial of every bad thing happening to her because of her own actions. She goes as far as rationalizing Jaune's dismissal of her as a game and doesn't grasp the extent of the damage she did until Jaune rejects her apology attempt. The moment she can see things more clearly she's so badly shook she attempts suicide.
- Stepford Smiler: Pyrrha. Particularly in chapter 17 where, in a flashback, she is introduced to her class and mostly everyone is captivated by her beautiful and kind smile. All except for Velvet, who sees through it, and instantly deduces her as cold and vicious.
- Strong Girl, Smart Guy: Pyrrha and Jaune are partners. The former is the strongest fighter in their year, while the latter is a better strategist. Justified in that Pyrrha is a natural prodigy with skills surpassing those her age. In Jaune's case, his victories often hinge on him outsmarting his opponents rather than beating them with raw skill. Downplayed a little in that Pyrrha is an analytical and tactical fighter, just not as much as Jaune is. And Jaune actually has more physical strength than Pyrrha, but does not have her years of experience.
- Summon Magic: Weiss' Semblance, as per canon. Unlike canon, she can also summon human opponents she's beaten before.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Jaune takes multiple levels through the entire story, first by learning some hand to hand combat and mastering the Aura coat technique (knowledge considered to be basic amongst Hunstmen in training), and later by figuring out how his Semblance works and using three forms of Aura Amplification, one for speed, defense and attack each. Unfortunately, switching forms too many times in a day causes intense strain.
- Ruby also does this after being trained by Qrow in a kick-based close quarters combat style to go with her Super-Speed akin to Shoot Style, complete with Crescent Rose transforming into greaves for maximum damage.
- Weiss first learns how to channel her Aura to use Dust without the aid of Myrtenaster, then after a breakthrough on her training with Winter she learns how to summon well before she did in canon. Also, unlike canon, her first summon is a copy of Jaune.
- Arslan also takes a level or two. She increases the power of her explosions by using multiple power limiters, even though this takes a huge toll on her body.
- Training from Hell: Velvet subjects Jaune to this. The rest of Team CFVY, along with Yang and Blake join in later.
- The Unfought: Weiss never gets to fight Jaune one on one, as she is defeated by Ruby in the round of 16.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Cinder, unlike her canon counterpart who intentionally instigated doom. She encounters Pyrrha in a coffee shop after the second preliminary round and calls her out on her lack of spirit while also undermining her determinism and pointing out how those who have nothing to lose will let nothing deter them. This is what makes her start seeing Jaune as a threat and neglect herself and her teammates in her pursuit of victory. In a way, someone can say that Cinder figuratively "killed" Pyrrha here too.
- Villainous Breakdown: Pyrrha gradually loses her composure in the final match of the tournament while attempting to verbally break Jaune in the middle of their fight. She unravels when she realizes she can't break him at all and ends up forfeiting.
- Woman Scorned: The reason Pyrrha hates Velvet is that she feels Velvet stole Jaune from her. On her side, Vel hates Pyrrha's acting and knows she'll eventually hurt Jaune.
- You Are Not Alone: The only reason Jaune didn't throw the towel in the final was knowing he had everyone's backs, contrasting with Pyrrha's loneliness at the top. This is made evident in their last clash, with Jaune managing to use elements from the fighting styles of everyone who inspired him.
