At the flip of a coin, good can become evil... Right can become wrong... Light can turn to dark... And the mightiest of heroes... can become the greatest of villains...
The Commission
is an Alternate Universe RWBY fanfic co-authored by CV12Hornet and Xomniac. You'd probably heard the two from their most popular work.
Word of God says that it has been cancelled.
The Commission contains the following tropes:
- The Ace: Pyrrha, obviously. Becomes an even bigger one when she single-handedly secures victory against Team CFVY in the Vytal Festival after the rest of her team goes down.
- Adaptational Badass: Team RWBY. While the girls are decent fighters in canon, but they're still New Meat. In this fic, Blake and Ruby are the two most feared and wanted criminals on the planet, Weiss rules the corporate world with such ruthlessness that chills Cinder and Yang is at the head of a mercenary company on par with any of the kingdoms' armies and delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle on Neo when they first meet.
- Adaptational Villainy: The members of RWBY are a group of collaborating criminal masterminds in this fic.
- Age Lift: Team RWBY's aged up in relation to everyone else. Notable effects in this fic include: Having the girls be in separate teams, Blake formerly being Velvet's friend and mentor and Weiss having sponsored Pyrrha in Mistral when the latter was just starting out.
- Ambiguously Gay: The girls of Team RWBY, considering that Blake thanks Ruby's supply of weapons and Mini-Mecha with tongue while Weiss and Yang's idea of waiting for further developments involves a pajama party date night. Nothing definitive, though.
- Badass Crew: Teams JNPR and CVFY are noted to be among the top percentile of hunters, even while in training. During initiation, the two groups banded together to take down a Goliath.
- The Coup: How the girls acquire power, they go to their respective groups and blackmail, intimidate or otherwise muscle their way to leadership.
- Cover-Blowing Superpower: Roman's dust store robbery has Ruby covering his escape instead of Cinder, being that the latter is with Weiss as her secretary. Unfortunately, Ruby's incredible rifle marksmanship clues Glynda in to her being in Vale due to no one else being that good with that particular weapon-type.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Ruby and Blake have interesting things responses when it comes to racism: they hand over some mooks from each other groups that started a fight over race issues and subjected said mooks to Cruel And Unusual Deaths. Later, when Blake nails the casually racist Cardin to a wall and proceeds to speak with Velvet with him just bleeding out.
- The Dreaded: The girls consider Qrow as one guy who will be the biggest wrench in their plans.
- Elite Mooks: The Exo-7. A team of seven Powered Armor-wearing Boxed Crooks with piddly-to-nonexistent aura that are able to match up against JNPR and CFVY together, completing most of their objectives save one and only retreating when Glynda and Oobleck arrive.
- Everyone Can See It: Jaune and Pyrrha, Coco and Velvet, Ren and Nora. People who have just met them tend to assume them all to be couples, only to be surprised when it's cleared up that they aren't (until the former two couples do get together, the latter two have an understanding).
- The Glomp: Yang's hugs are so strong that Weiss had steel rods put in her clothing to keep the other woman from crushing her and it still doesn't help.
- Hero-Worshipper:
- Nora for Yang due to the latter leading a rescue of the former's home town.
- Pyrrha is a more subtle one for Weiss as the latter sponsored her personally when she was just starting out.
- Kayfabe: In public, Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee are mortal enemies, whose groups - the Schnee Dust Company and the White Fang - hate each other to bits. In private, they're great friends and enjoy each other's company after having to deal with Ruby and Yang all of the time.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: When Nora defies RWBY's expectations and doesn't attack Mercury like Yang did in canon, the group decides to go through with their Plan B to draw Grimm towards the Vytal Festival by gathering the worst of the White Fang and Crimson Thorns (particularly the child murderers and rapists) and terrorizing the shit out of them before killing them all.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After a racist waiter causes Velvet to storm out of a restaurant, his manager gives him a good dressing-down. After all, alienating the customers is bad for business.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: After Qrow hands Ruby her ass, she busts out her Spring Maiden powers.
- Make an Example of Them: When Blake goes to visit Velvet in an attempt to recruit her to the girls' conspiracy, which the former was certain the latter wouldn't agree to owing to their past and Velvet's feelings on faunus rights and the White Fang, she first finds Cardin and nails him to a wall.
- Mighty Glacier: Attention is drawn to exactly how tanky Jaune is, what with having a crazy amount of aura and wielding a shield. The glacier part comes in when you remember that his only offensive tool is a sword, and he really isn't all that fast. During JNPR's fight with CVFY, he takes enough gunfire from Coco to down a dozen Nevermores by her estimate, with practically no reaction.
- Mythology Gag: Yang mentions being hired by several companies that are
ship names for the RWBY fandom such as White Rose Shipping and Checkmate Enterprises. - Naïve Newcomer: Jaune's an obvious one, but there's also Haruko Miki, the Spring Maiden. She introduces herself to Ruby by barging into her office, declaring her a villain and generally acting like a Toku hero, then she gets offended when Ruby interrupts her speech.
- Nebulous Evil Organization: The Commission, though not really all that nebulous. It's specifically made to counter Ozpin's Ancient Conspiracy, as they feel that he's been doing a piss-poor job of keeping the world safe, given the state it's in.
- N.G.O. Superpower: The titular Commission. Simply put, they have the resources and influence of the Schnee Dust Company, the military power of the Dust Devils which rival any of the kingdoms' own armies and the underground reach of the White Fang and Crimson Thorns. If that's not enough, their R&D outstrips even Atlas' own with their Powered Armor development shown to be years ahead along with robotics and artificial Aura development, considering that Penny is with them instead of Atlas.
- Once Killed a Man with a Noodle Implement: Yang apparently killed ten men with a rusty spoon once.
- Private Military Contractor: Yang's Dust Devils. It's essentially an answer to Atlas from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
- Spider-Sense: Qrow's Semblance here is some really short-term precognition that he uses to match Ruby's Super-Speed.
- Squee: Upon Yang offering her an autograph, Nora lets out a squeal that shatters every window within twenty meters of her.
- Time for Plan B: Half the time, the plans in motion by Team RWBY don't always pan out, but they tend to be prepared for when things do go wrong.
- Unkempt Beauty: Velvet's attractiveness factor isn't really in any dispute, but her fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired.
- Villain Protagonist: Team RWBY. Here, the Commission or Strategos.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Weiss, thanks to her changing up the Schnee Dust Company after their horrid treatment of their faunus workers come to light (and simply exiling her family rather than killing them outright). Also, Yang's rise to power involving the rescue of outlying villages from Grimm attacks.
- We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: After Pyrrha seeks Weiss out for help when Teams JNPR and CFVY are investigating the White Fang, Winter tries to turn her against her sister with pictures that show that Weiss hasn't really improved faunus working conditions in Schnee Dust. This shakes her until she shows it to Velvet on a hunch, with the latter girl commenting that while the picture is real, the time stamp has been doctored.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 13 shows Ruby to be the Spring Maiden after killing the last one.
- You All Meet in an Inn: The girls of Team RWBY weren't actually together in a team when they were in Beacon. Instead, they met in a bar, bond over a plate of cookies and work their way up from there.
