Fanfic / Arc Corp

Art by Kirire

”There are many things that go bump in the night. Too many to count. It's our job to give it our best shot however, and to make sure that little boys and girls believe it the monster under their bed or in their closet, and not the creature outside their window looking in with hungry eyes.”

—Nicholas Arc, Director of ARC Corp.

After leaving the White Fang, Blake Belladonna finds that starting a new life was difficult when you didn’t have any recent records or background info that wouldn’t expose you as a former terrorist. Running low on options short of applying to Beacon, she decides to look into a missing person case so that she can get some of the reward money.

But when she’s led to a run-down house by a little girl, she finds something beyond what she could have expected.

Arc Corp is a RWBY fanfic written by Coeur Al'Aran and published on Fanfiction Dot Net. Currently ongoing.

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This fic contains examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted. Jaune assumed this about Coda, and fervently tried to take it down. Eventually, he realized that it was benign, but by that point, he'd completely destroyed any hope for any real friendship, and so now they mostly avoid each other and use a middleman whenever they need to communicate.
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • The Perception Filter effect of I AM DOG turns out to work on animals as well as humans. The upshot of this is that Zwei sees Blake as a dog... a very attractive dog who he tries to chat up, much to her horror.
  • The anomalous dating site Matchmaker sets people up with who are meant to be their perfect matches. One of the developers of the site is revealed to be infatuated with Pyrrha, believing they are meant to be together. Considering he is a perverted Basement-Dweller who makes erotic artwork of her, she is rightfully disgusted.
• Adaptational Backstory Change:
  • Here, Grimm and Aura are both anomalies (named Brothers Grimm and Light Of The Soul) that were let loose into the world during the containment breach that brought the Arc family their name, instead of being created by the Brother Gods or being the remnants of Old Humanity's magic; the Brother Gods themselves are later noted as having been anomalies with god complexes. Similarly, the Dust used for practically every industrial purpose you can find is a byproduct of the anomaly All Becomes Dust, which Nicholas Schnee and Serenity Arc stole away as they betrayed the ARC Corporation.
  • The story of Mountain Glenn being destroyed by Grimm is here just the cover story. In actuality, it suddenly came under the influence of an anomaly that, while not directly deadly in the same way the Grimm might be, would have put normal human existence in jeopardy if its reach grew any farther. Unable to figure out the source of the problem, governments and ARC Corp chose to quarantine the city to prevent things from spiraling out of control. Now the danger within Mountain Glenn isn't the Grimm, but instead its immortal denizens who have all been driven homicidally insane by their circumstances.
  • Neo's backstory has been altered such that "she" (Jaune insists that "it" would be more accurate) is no longer human. Or faunus for that matter. It is more like an extremity of something other which had sought out humanity out of curiosity and desire for entertainment. Coeur, in an author's note, explicitly compares Neo to Nyarlathotep, the Lovecraftian horror that acts as the messenger for the Outer Gods.
• Adaptational Badass: Most of Jaune's family are civilians in Coeur's other works. Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc in canon are housewife and network engineer, respectively. Here, the entire family is The Men in Black, and regularly tangle with murderous monsters and paranormal threats.
• Adaptational Heroism: Doctor Merlot, in canon, was a madman who performed experiments on the Creatures of Grimm, culminating in the fall of Mountain Glenn; by the time he is confronted in RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, he has developed a god complex and considers the loss of his research a greater tragedy than the city's fall. In this story, he was a medical doctor offered a job to perform a cesarean section for a mother's difficult pregnancy. When faced with the thought of an unskilled back-alley doctor killing both an expectant mother and her unborn child in an impossible operation, Merlot resolved to operate himself in the hopes of saving at least the mother. Though the fact that Merlot mentioned that the job offer came with a significant chunk of money he would use for his own research projects might indicate that he simply didn't have the opportunity to begin his slide into madness.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Salem is still the leader of the Grimm and is dead set on trying to kill Ozma (with a willingness to destroy Vale as well if it could allow her to accomplish her goal), but she is also shown to be unflinchingly polite to Jaune, treating him like family. A far cry from the Salem from canon, who was Faux Affably Evil to everyone around her, and was willing to coldly harm or dismiss her own minions if she was displeased with them.
• Adaptational Personality Change:
  • Saphron Arc in canon was a good-hearted woman who dotes on her younger brother and tries to help the heroes when she can. Here, she shows ambiguously racist tendencies, favors brutal tactics no matter how intentionally hostile an anomaly may be, treats Jaune like an idiot, and is implied to be responsible for the destruction of Kuroyuri.
  • In terms of Coeur's fan characters that he uses across multiple stories, this story is thus far the most dysfunctional portrayal of Nicholas, Juniper, and their kids. While some stories have painted them as dysfunctional to some extent before, those still in the end portray the Arcs as close-knit and loving. Here they are very harsh with each other, some don't even feel familial love for the others, and the best Jaune can say about Saphron is that she wouldn't enjoy killing him if she had to unlike some of the others. And while the one sibling Jaune thinks cares for him the most (Coral), does view him more favorably than the rest of the family, she admits to Blake that she views her little brother as science experiment more than anything else.
• Adaptation Name Change: Due to the Family Business, Saphron Arc kept her surname rather than blending it with her wife's.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • The Schnee family are given this treatment, due to them acting as a group that makes a profit off of selling anomalies to others without care for what effects they might have. And that's before the revelation that their use of the anomaly All Becomes Dust involves sacrificing humans and faunus to the anomaly in order to create Dust, literally getting rich off the lives of their victims.
    • In canon, Nicholas Schnee was an honest, kind man who was willing to get his hands just as dirty as his workers' to build his company. Here, he was a traitor to ARC Corp who, along with his wife Serenity Arc, abandoned the company's duty and ran off to sell the byproducts of the powerful anomaly All Becomes Dust.
    • Winter is the most ruthless and villainous of the Schnee family to date. She has a fondness for hosting auctions to sell anomalies, finding a perverse joy in witnessing the chaos she causes with them. She is also shown to be ruthless, due to how she used the Rusted Queen as a lure to distract and very likely kill Jaune despite the risk it posed to the city, which allowed her to enter Vale while he was occupied. And she is also dead set on causing Jaune to complete his partial transformation and become an anomalous being himself, to the point she is willing to kill those close to him in order to force him over the Despair Event Horizon to do so.
    • Downplayed with Weiss. While she is aware and complicit in the SDC selling anomalies for profit, she is a white sheep in the family who doesn't look too favorably upon her family's actions, even if she doesn't view ARC Corp in any higher regard. Her first appearence even saw her covertly helping Jaune and Blake capture someone who was using an item her family auctioned off, if only out of concern for her friends being caught in the crossfire. After her family, sans her little brother, are killed by ARC Corp, she asks to be listed as a friendly contact rather than aim for vengeance, though this is admittedly because she fears being killed by the other, less scrupulous members of the Arc family if she doesn't make her stance officially known.
  • Saphron treats Jaune rudely or with disdain, ranging from her apparent apathy to killing her younger brother on multiple occasions if it gets a mission done, to working to undermine the more peaceful operations of the Containment Office as a whole. The Arc family in general is depicted as having little familial love to go around, with none of that love going towards Jaune.
• Adaptational Wimp: Zig-zagged. Jaune is far more competent and experienced than he is in canon but he has no aura, meaning that even with his anomaly abilities he's physically much weaker and less hardy than his canon counterpart.
• Alternate Universe Fic: Remnant here has far more threats than just the Grimm, and Jaune’s family runs a company that deals with said threats. Additionally, its history is different, as both Aura and the Grimm are anomalies, rather than creations from the Brother Gods.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Happens twice in quick succession when Jaune and Blake investigate a sunken ship in the middle of the ocean. A psychic tentacle monster traps them inside the ship before it gets eaten by a fifty-foot Sea Monster, which tries to hunt them as well... before the rocky plateau the ship was resting on reveals itself to be the head of a Giant Enemy Crab that kills the comparatively tiny fifty-footer.
• Ambiguous Gender: After their identity is erased by the Blank Slate, the Beacon student’s gender is unable to be known, even to themselves.
• Ambiguous Situation: At the end of Chapter 54, after Blake, Jaune, and Timothy escape the temporal loop, Blake asks how long they were in there. Jaune responds that there's no way to tell, but that he's just going to assume that Blake managed to figure things out and get them back home during the first run, because the alternative of them being there for untold years is too horrifying to even think about. The duo opts to get breakfast to take their mind off it.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: While some chapters briefly break away from Blake's POV, Chapter 96 is told entirely from Jaune's perspective thanks to Blake being "asleep" while the Lady of the Lake anomaly is using her body.
• Anticlimax: Ozpin reveals to Blake that Faunus are anomalies in Chapter 18, something that had been foreshadowed in prior conversations with Weiss and Saphron. But since she's focused on Jaune's safety more than anything else at the moment, Blake directly tells Ozpin that she doesn't care at all about this or his attached Hannibal Lecture. This is made even less impactful when Jaune explains several chapters later that Faunus are moreso anomalous, being descended from an anomaly, than being true anomalies themselves.
• And I Must Scream: Ozpin describes his time in containment as this, as he spent centuries being used as a Living Battery via methods he considered torture.
• Auction of Evil: The Schnee family seems to be in charge of one of these, if not having made their fortune with it. While they still run the Schnee Dust Company publicly, behind the scenes they and ARC Corp are apparently at odds with each other over access and use of anomalies.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Class 3a, with all civilization reduced to rubble by a sudden change in the planet's inertia, causing the oceans to slosh over the landmasses and all tectonic stresses to suddenly be knocked loose. It would be a lot more impressive if it wasn't limited to a single anomaly (an apparent model globe that is actually a real planet with tiny intelligent life), wasn't triggered by Blake absently playing with the thing, and wasn't reset back to normal a moment later by another anomaly.
  • Jaune's main point of contention regarding Terra's Slaved Anomaly, A Scene of Stars, is that, when she uses it to steal stars for her weapon, she is causing potential Class X-2 events (or at least a variant thereof) in the solar systems from which she stole them, essentially consigning to death every scrap of life in the entirety of said systems. He also brings up the point that there is a non-zero possibility that her Slaved Anomaly could choose Remnant's sun to fire, which doesn't help her case for using it.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Aura, Semblances, and Grimm are all commonplace in the world, yet most people are content to write off other phenomena as nothing but stories and urban legends. This is deliberately invoked by the powers that be — those three anomalies are all so widespread that the chance to hide them from the public is long gone, and the only other option is to draw a stark line between these things that are obviously real and these other things that are obviously just tall tales and conspiracy theories.
  • Even after dealing with several eldritch anomalies, Blake originally scoffs at the idea that aliens might exist. Of course, Jaune only has to remind her of what she's seen to change her tune.
• Asshole Victim:
  • "Uncle Grass", a child trafficker operating in Menagerie, is hunted down and incinerated by Jaune.
  • The Schnee family as a whole (sans Weiss at the least), but especially Winter, become this after Arc Corp launches a raid meant to take down the SDC. After all the chaos and death she caused, including her attempts to break Jaune and force him to become an anomalous being, no one will really be shedding tears for the eldest Schnee child.
• The Atoner: Hundreds of years ago, ARC Corp tried to use anomalies for their own benefit rather than actively contain them. This resulted in a massive security breach that destroyed most of their facilities, and Jaune’s family was among the survivors. They’ve been working to repent for this ever since.
• Audience Surrogate: Blake, as a complete newcomer to the world of ARC Corp and anomalies, serves as the vessel through which Jaune and others explain the world, its history, and how anomalies as a whole work.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The work uniform at Arc Corp.
• Badass Normal: Even by Remnant's standards, Jaune is a Muggle, completely lacking the ability to manifest Aura. Despite this, he still survives direct combat with an invisible Beacon student. His apparent prowess in fighting anomalies is even the reason Ruby gives for why she abandoned her dream of being a huntress in favor of one day becoming an ARC Corp officer like him. Downplayed in that his arms are anomalous, so despite not having aura, he's able to play with fire if the situation is right.
• Bad "Bad Acting":
  • A variant. The illusions of Kali Belladonna and Nicholas Arc act reasonably like people caught in a house fire, but they act nothing like the real ones would.
  • Jaune and Blake are apparently this, as their attempt to cover up Tomorrow's News by making it seem like the ad campaign for a new film results in them filming what is immediately deemed as one of the worst movies of all-time. Blake insists she could have given a decent performance if Jaune didn't rush the production and gave her time to practice her lines.
• Bad Liar: While he can come up with iron-clad cover stories if given enough prep time, Jaune falls into this when forced to think of a lie on the spot. His inability to explain away his actions on-the-spot makes Blake quickly realize she's somehow in a living house, Jaune going Sure, Let's Go with That to Ruby's questions on a prior mission (resulting in her following him around until an anomaly attacked them), and as for his explanation to Yang about what Ruby will do as a part-time employee in their office:
  Yang: So, what's it like at your office? Asking as a concerned elder sister.
  Jaune: Our office is completely normal.
  Yang: Yeah? And what will Ruby be doing on her work experience there?
  Jaune: Totally normal things. Obviously.
• Batman Gambit: After realizing the invisible Beacon student is following their investigation, Jaune does two things: he tells the Beacon faculty that he's ID'd the perpetrator when he actually has yet to do so, and he lets the story leak out to the student body. This provokes the student into attacking them that night, where Jaune and Blake are able to defeat them.
• Beast with a Human Face: The anomaly at the Scarlatina residence takes the form of a giant spider with a mostly human head on top. Human-like, but like a half-melted mannequin head with multiple empty, glowing eye sockets, and a nested mouth consisting of a ring of molars and proper mandibles inside. It ends up becoming the Containments Branch's Team Pet.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: A Beacon student intended to use the Blank Slate so they could become invisible and turn Beacon into their playground. They did indeed become invisible — and their life and identity are completely erased to the point that no one will ever see them again, even themself.
• BFG: Terra's weapon, an enormous sniper rifle.
• Benevolent Boss: As silly as Jaune can be, he's a good boss to Blake. He gives her an advance so she can rent an apartment, encourages her to talk to her parents, and treats her like a close friend despite the haphazard circumstances of her being hired.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Blake views Jaune's family in this manner as she learns more about them. It comes to a head when she calls Saphron after Jaune is captured during a mission and, rather than start planning a rescue, Saphron talks about Mercy Killing her brother without a second thought and finding someone to replace him. She's so aghast when Jaune not only explains afterwards that this is standard procedure, but also implies that some of his other siblings would actually get some enjoyment from murdering him, that she drags him off to meet her parents so he can know what an actual loving family is like. Her hatred of them manages to deepen even more when she learns that Jaune's father actually attempted to kill him when he first transformed, only stopping when one of his sisters pointed out that he could make for an interesting test subject. For his part, Jaune is well aware that his family is awful: it's telling that the "family member" he likes and admires the most is his godmother, Salem, if only because their shared anomalous nature helps them bond.
• Big Sister Bully:
  • Saphron clearly looks down on Jaune, with much of it seemingly being fueled by her doubting his abilities as a director due to his instance on containing anomalies rather than kill them all with extreme prejudice, with their relationship being very strained as a result. Her wife Terra insists that Saphron's callous and dismissive attitude towards her younger brother is more Anger Born of Worry than anything else, but Blake is incredibly skeptical of this, especially as the fic goes on and Saphron seems eager to take a preemptive approach towards whatever problems Jaune's anomaly status may cause in the future, always being the first to suggest killing him as a solution to a given problem in company-wise meetings.
  • And she's implied to be one of his better family relationships, as Jaune later tells Blake in the aftermath of the textbook monster mission that Saphron would have at least felt bad about having to follow company policy and kill him had Blake been unable to save him. He simply says of his other siblings that "some would enjoy [killing him] more than others", which is backed up by Coral's own statements regarding Jaune's place in the family, as well as Amber expressing disappointment when Blake successfully saves him from a different hostage situation much later on.
• Black-and-White Morality: Subverted. It initially seems like this is the central conflict between Jaune and Ozpin; the former being raised in ARC Corp to see all anomalies as a danger that must be kept away from humanity, and the later, being an anomaly himself, feeling that some anomalies can benefit Remnant and should be approached on a case-by-case basis. As the fic goes on, it becomes clear that Jaune's own stance is actually the grey between his family's "kill 'em all" anti-anomaly mindset and Ozpin's optimistic belief that anomalies and humanity can live in harmony, believing instead that the masquerade must be maintained for the good of both groups due to how easily things could go off the rails. It's later revealed that beyond containment, Jaune allows dozens of anomalies, both in and outside Vale, to roam free so long as they can keep a low profile, being on friendly terms and working alongside several that live in the city proper. Naturally, he never reports their existences to his family, as they would immediately kill him upon learning about this part of the Containment Office's operations.
• Black Comedy:
  • Blake accidentally mass-murders a civilization of microscopic people living on Jaune's globe by spinning the thing, causing tiny global disasters. Coincidentally, he also happens to have an anomaly that can slightly reverse time sitting nearby, which she sheepishly and guiltily uses to fix it before he can notice.
  • A downplayed example, but Ruby apparently frequently invokes A God Am I on the globe as well and made eating cookies a holy doctrine. Jaune snarks that she might honestly cause a holy war with her antics and she's probably terrifying them considering she's a giant floating head making bizarre demands, which she 'fixes' by telling them that holy wars are bad to cover her tracks. A later chapter indeed shows that the inhabitants of the planet worship/fear her as some horrifying god.
• Black Sheep:
  • Jaune's interest in anomalies and preference to keeping them contained makes him this in contrast to the rest of his family who prefer to approach to them. The rest of the family's frosty attitude towards him isn't helped by his role in the death of his mother or his anomalous nature; his family only tolerates his existence because Coral made a case of using him for anomaly research.
  • Coral is even more of this due to being a Mad Scientist who not only collects anomalies to figure out how they function, but is on friendly speaking terms with Willow Schnee. Nicholas Arc is outright stated to have her under observation, in case she one day betrays Arc Corp and needs to be eliminated.
• Blatant Lies: The Welcoming House tries to save itself by appealing to Jaune and Blake using illusions of their loved ones, but that whole idea is so illogical that neither of them is fooled for a second.
• Brains and Brawn: Discussed, with Blake viewing her and Jaune's dynamic as such. Since she has the aura, training, and combat semblance, she sees herself as the brawn who handles the more dangerous anomalies and bodyguards Jaune; meanwhile, Jaune is the brains that focuses mainly on the investigation and research side of things due to his years of experience and knowledge. Jaune also vocalizes this later on, joking that Blake's improvement on the observation side of things is starting to make him feel redundant.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Jaune's youngest sister Amber, an obnoxious young woman who immediately gets on Blake's nerves.
• Broken Masquerade: ARC Corp works very hard to prevent this, but there have been times in the past where they failed and they need to switch to explaining away the anomaly as something natural. Notably, Aura and Semblances are actually a side effect of an anomaly called "Light of the Soul" that was released by Ozpin to counter the Grimm, which are another anomaly with the full name of "Brother's Grimm". Though this also extends to seemingly mundane things, such as dreams and why wires become so easily tangled, with Jaune writing a paper to explain that this was simply based on probability when he was younger.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed. Jaune states that doesn't necessarily view Salem as his hero, but he does admire them for how long they managed to hold on to their original humanity after becoming anomalous, and is saddened when he realizes that they've been losing that fight more quickly than he realized in recent years.
• Brought Down to Badass: It's no secret that Ruby is drastically less dangerous when she doesn't have a weapon on her. But bottom-ten-percent in hand-to-hand at Signal still means that she's been doing it for years, and she still has superhuman strength, speed, and toughness. The civilian farmers with shotguns never stood a chance.
• Brutal Honesty: When Blake finally confides to Jaune about her worries regarding calling her parents, Jaune points that she barely has a relationship with them by this point, so even if they do reject her like she fears, it's not like she's losing much. Meanwhile, the best-case scenario is that they make up, so the potential positives far outweigh the potential negatives.
• Chekhov's Gun: "Blood that Feeds", one of the first anomalies mentioned, crops back up as a threat that the Containments Office teams up with Qrow to take care of much later on.
• Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Torchwick thought he was just going to pilfer some of the SDC's product off a cargo ship and get away clean. Unfortunately, the one he picks is a baited trap the SDC set up for ARC Corp, who arrive in the middle of their heist, and he and his men are caught in the trap as well.
• Comically Missing the Point: In the middle of the Scarlatina case, Jaune notices Blake's terror at their quarry and genuinely asks her if she's arachnophobic. As if you needed a pathological fear to be creeped out by a person-sized spider with a slimy, deformed human face and a lamprey-mouth filled with a ring of molars...
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Working for ARC Corp and having regular interaction with anomalies invokes this in Blake, with the biggest example being Timothy. When the giant spider with human teeth first becomes the office pet, she is absolutely terrified of the thing and could barely stand being near the creature, wondering why Jaune and Ruby not only find the creature cute, but saw fit to give it such a mundane name. By the time the horrors of the Mountain Glenn arc are over, she's warmed up to Timothy considerably, and it doesn't take much longer for her to evolve into a doting pet owner who adores Timothy even more than Jaune and Ruby combined and can no longer even comprehend why other people insist Timothy is scary, since he's just an oversized housepet compared to everything she's dealt with over the past year.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Jaune's gloves aren't exactly out of place when his normal outfit is an extremely sharp business suit, but he pointedly never takes them off no matter what he's doing. Underneath those gloves (and the suit jacket that he less-conspicuously also keeps on), his skin up to his shoulders is not only horrifically burnt but are effectively smoldering volcanic rock. The gloves are both to keep people from seeing it and freaking out, but also let him touch things without burning them, or worse.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Nicholas Schnee built his company by betraying ARC Corp, stealing a powerful anomaly, and selling it so far and wide that it instantly became Reality Class, meaning that if ARC Corp attempts to interfere and hide it, they'd set Remnant back over a hundred years technologically. In the modern-day, the family continues the corrupt tradition by selling anomalies on the black market.
• Cowardly Lion: Blake tends to balk and complain about investigating the various anomalies despite having Huntress level training and being a former White Fang terrorist. Justified considering that the anomalies aren't just a physical threat and can't always be taken down physically.
• Crapsack World: Remnant in canon was already crappy enough with the Grimm running around, but here it also has numerous anomalies that have claimed many lives in the past.
• Cringe Comedy: The werewolf furry sex convention arc consists largely of Blake being made about as uncomfortable as possible. Jaune's experience isn't much better.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Jaune rather harshly and bluntly tells Ruby that she's fired in Chapter 27, when he and Blake return to Vale to discover that Yang is in the office and now aware of anomalies. Jaune explains to Blake after everyone else leaves that he never planned to hire her full-time anyway out of concern for her safety and this was as good a time as any to properly reject her, insisting that it was far nicer than anything his siblings would have done. However, Jaune does later apologize offscreen and she continues to act as an office-sitter whenever he and Blake are out of town.
• Cuteness Proximity: Ruby thinks the Guardian Weaver is cute, to Blake's initial confusion. Ruby also has a similar reaction to the globe, though she also uses it to invoke some lighthearted A God Am I antics.
• Deadly Book: Jaune and Blake investigate a suspicious suicide, where the victim apparently stabbed herself with a pencil at her desk and bled out. Looking around the room, Blake notices the open textbook she was working in and feels the urge to finish what the girl started. She solves the last question only to find that it's been six hours, she's extremely dehydrated, and she wouldn't respond to anything Jaune did except giving her answers she was stuck on. That textbook is anomalous, which compels anyone who reads it to solve every question in it from start to finish, and if they get stuck, they'll sit there in a trance until they die of thirst. The girl, through sheer force of will, seemingly stabbed herself hoping the pain would break the hypnosis, but it didn't. They close the case, only to realize the next day when they get more calls that the book wasn't the anomaly, it was just a product, the manufacturer has shipped hundreds of these things, and so many people are being hospitalized that it's threatening to become Reality Class.
• Deal with the Devil: In Chapter 51, Blake makes a deal with a fae entity residing in one of Coral's anomalies, the Lady of the Lake. In exchange for her ability to feel emotions for a week, she would gain a power that can easily kill an anomalized Winter. While under the contract, the being also briefly takes control of Blake to make the faunus officially claim it as her Slaved Anomaly, in hopes of enticing her to make future dealings. Blake is understandably not of a fan of this, but learns that she's also under a geas that renders her unable to reveal this information to Jaune or anyone else.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Unlike Coeur's other works with Jaune's family, Juniper Arc was killed before the story began.
  • In Chapter 52, Winter Schnee is Killed Off for Real after they become anomalized, which was preceded by the deaths of Jacques and Willow during an Arc Corp raid on the Schnee Manor.
• Death of a Child:
  • The missing kid that Blake was looking for in the first chapter turns out to have been eaten by the house; Blake finds his skeleton in the dryer.
  • One case starts with Jaune and Blake investigating the suspicious suicide of Sky Lark's elementary-age sister.
  • The anomaly in Menagerie turns out to be a little girl with Reality Warper abilities, who decides that it's better for her to drown instead of causing people problems.
• Despair Event Horizon: Annabelle, the little girl-turned-teddy bear anomaly in Menagerie, overhears from Jaune and Blake that there's no easy way to keep her safe while also not causing a lot of problems for other people. She uses her powers to capsize the ship she's on, killing herself.
• Detonation Moon: The moon of Remnant was broken by an anomaly of some sort. Jaune is sincerely annoyed at Blake for not realizing that herself.
• Didn't Think This Through: Blake decides to treat Jaune to a spa day in Menagerie, thinking very carefully about the kind of issues he's likely to face being a rich human among faunus, but not so carefully about how his arms are constantly burning with anomalous heat. She chastises herself for not realizing and promptly makes arrangements to put him in a private sauna and make his massage lower-body only.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Blake tends to hit Jaune in frustration, such as when he fails to tell her about the Guardian Weaver's true nature or after he forces her to talk to her parents, the latter instance with her kicking him while he's on the ground. It's always Played for Laughs and neither Blake or Jaune ever dwell on it.
• The Dreaded: The Twilight City seems to be this to ARC Corp, as Nicholas Arc's investigation into it moving results in the rest of ARC Corp genuinely worrying that he won't come back alive and preparing company-wide contingencies should it happen. Considering that it's "contained" instead of terminated or explained away, it seems to be way too strong for even the directors who favor tactics to take down permanently. It later turns out that "The Twilight City" is their codeword for the anomalies of Mountain Glenn. When Jaune realizes that the anomalies that were contained within are reaching Vale, he immediately calls for all hands on deck, with his father labeling it as a potential end of the world scenario when passing the message on to every other branch of Arc Corp.
• Dug Too Deep: Or... too far in a bad direction laterally, but the idea is the same, and an author's note name-drops the trope. White Fang mooks excavating the collapsed train tunnels into Mountain Glenn for their canon operations finally reach the city... only to stumble onto a saccharine-looking but homicidal madhouse. The city is inexplicably intact and fully populated with crazed children whose idea of "playing" is to gruesomely stab people to death, and apparently the whole place is regularly carpet-bombed to smoldering rubble but somehow that doesn't stick. The children eventually make their way out through the excavation and start to reach Vale.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Amber, Jaune's youngest sister, is first mentioned in Chapter 18 as the person who'll succeed Jaune as director of the Vale office in the event of his death. She later appears (albeit unnamed) in Chapter 28 as the young girl complaining about being left behind on the Mountain Glenn mission, before formally joining the cast in Chapter 71 as an intern at the Containments Office.
• Empty Shell:
  • Coral Arc, who is only focused on her research and little else. She only has the barest understanding of how emotions and different human relationships are meant to work, as evidenced by her interactions with Jaune, wherein she sees no issue with French kissing him as a sign of affection despite his protests, and even states to Blake that she'd have sex with him if she thought it was necessary to keep him stable.
  • Blake temporarily becomes this when first using one of Coral's anomalies (a book housing a fae), inadvertently trading all her emotions for several days so she can be granted the means to assist Jaune in killing Winter. She questions if Coral’s own emotionless state was also the result of this, but is quickly corrected on the matter.
• Enemy Mine:
  • If Jaune had his way, Ozpin would be locked in a containment cell, but he's still willing to work with the headmaster if it means stopping people from abusing other anomalies.
  • Weiss has a similar antipathy with ARC Corp, but nonetheless dislikes how her family's operations tend to cause suffering as well, and thus is willing to help whenever she learns that her sister is causing trouble in Vale, such as quietly chipping in to help apprehend a foe when it seems they were about to escape.
• Experienced Protagonist: Zigzagged with Jaune. On the one hand, he's new to running an office by himself, has no formal combat training, and initially has a problem with forgetting that Blake is new to ARC Corp and thus doesn't realize things Jaune takes for granted. On the other hand, he has dealt with anomalies since birth, is good at the investigative part of the job, and has amicable connections with everyone from the local business that supplies his and Blake's suits to the various anomalies that live in Vale.
• Explosive Breeder: A Hive of Worms is shown to have a rate of reproduction that can only be described as anomalous. Within one night a small bucket of the creatures can infest an entire crop field, such that every plant is literally filled to the skin with slugs. Blake and Jaune see it happen for themselves, and as far as they can see they multiply basically as fast as they can find and eat food.
• Face–Heel Turn: In the backstory, the SDC was founded by Serenity Arc and her husband Nicholas Schnee, who turned traitor by stealing an anomaly, All Becomes Dust, and immediately acting to make it Reality-Class and sell its byproduct.
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • Ozpin reveals to Blake that Faunus are anomalies in Chapter 18. Since he says this right in the middle of explaining why he refuses to help an endangered Jaune, she tells him point blank she doesn’t care and ignores his attempt at a Hannibal Lecture.
  • Sienna tries to guilt and pressure Blake over leaving the White Fang by asking Jaune what he thinks about his employee being a former terrorist. Unfortunately for her, he already knew and doesn't care, so his resultant shrug totally knocks the wind out of her sails.
  • The anomaly behind the Matchmaker app tries to cause a rift between Blake and Jaune by threatening to tell the latter all about Blake's relationship with Adam, believing that the two are lovers and assuming that Jaune would be appalled that she's had other boyfriends. Blake just shrugs and tells him to go for it. When the anomaly is too stunned by that response to say anything, Blake decides to give Jaune the short version of the story herself, and he predictably congratulates her on successfully exiting an abusive relationship, confusing the anomaly even more.
• Family Business: ARC Corp is run by Jaune’s family, who have been a part of the company for generations. Jaune himself, despite only opening an independent office two weeks before the start of the story, has been going on missions since he was a child.
• Fangirl: Ruby became one for Jaune and ARC Corp when she saw him kill an anomaly and has decided she wants to work for ARC Corp. Jaune is very much against it, not just because she is fifteen years old and thus too young to work there full-time, but also because she's a huntress-in-training and he doesn't want to risk Ozpin's wrath. She eventually ends up being their on-call office and pet sitter.
• Fantastic Nuke: Terra's Slaved Anomaly appears to be an orb with disconcerting lights sparkling inside it, which is implied to harness the power of the stars themselves. She can load the power into her gun, and when it's charged enough the resulting blast is enough to obliterate an entire cargo ship and leave a crater in the ocean. Jaune later clarifies that it literally shoots stars.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Remnant is apparently filled to the brim with strange and illogical phenomena which only vaguely obey the rules of logic and science, most of which have been deliberately covered up as tall tales and conspiracy theories by ARC Corp.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • For the crime of rifling through girls' unmentionables in their private quarters, the Blank Slate pervert's fate is to live the rest of their life without anyone being able to meaningfully interact with them, as all identifying information beyond the immediate fact of their existence is permanently wiped from reality, including their own mind. Plus they only have one hand. Jaune muses whether it would be a mercy to let them abuse the power until even that last aspect is erased (their mind, not their hand).
  • The entirety of the Twilight City's inhabitants. They have been repeatedly resurrected every day since the anomaly took root in Mountain Glenn and have collectively gone insane from being freed from death, now killing and eating each other out of boredom. The hospital staff who were at the ground zero of the anomaly's emergence have been subsumed in the anomaly's growths the entire time, being slowly drained of their blood to feed the anomaly's child until they die... just to be revived again and the process starts anew.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Guardian Weaver from the Scarlatina case is a dog-sized spider with a human face that Blake doesn't want anything to do with. Jaune decides to name it Timothy and it becomes the office pet. Blake eventually warms up to the creature herself.
• Forceful Kiss:
  • Blake gives one to Jaune in Chapter 47, mainly because it's the only thing she can think of that would shock him enough to stop his transformation into an anomaly. It works, and he thanks Blake while assuring her he knows there wasn't any deeper meaning behind it beyond bringing him back to his senses. The following chapter has Blake ruminate on how she can no longer deny her feelings after such an action.
  • This happens again in Chapter 60, except this time Blake's body is being briefly controlled by the Lady of the Lake anomaly (as part of their most recent deal), who forces a deep, aggressive kiss upon Jaune as he struggles to push her off him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the Blank Slate case, what tips Blake off to the perpetrator's presence is them holding a pair of panties. Despite the fact that normally, anything the perpetrator touches should also be invisible. Nineteen chapters later, it turns out that the panties themselves are another anomaly (hence why it was unaffected), with Ozpin forcing Jaune and Blake to return to Beacon and deal with it.
  • When Blake denies that there is any romantic connection between her and Jaune to Ruby, she states only someone madly in love or deeply disturbed would want to marry into the Arc family and subject their children to ARC Corp's twisted indoctrination. When Blake later meets the anomaly-resurrected Juniper in Mountain Glenn, the latter admits she was blinded by love when she married Nicholas, to the point of being the one to pitch the idea of treating their future children as employees in order to win him over.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Pyrrha is such a believer in the Fist Office's scorched earth tactics because her first encounter with an anomaly left her trapped in a tunnel of love with Saphron and Terra for five whole years, on top of almost being eaten alive at the end of it.
  • Ozpin refuses to help Jaune or aid ARC Corp in any way, because the old ARC Corp imprisoned and tortuously exploited him for hundreds of years just to get cheap energy via his magic.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: In Chapter 47, Jaune chooses to save Blake over killing Winter, tossing himself off a skyscraper in hopes of flying her to safety. Even when he learns that they have a second opportunity to take her down immediately after, Jaune heeds Blake's pleas and they return home rather than risk a hopeless fight.
• Friendless Background: Jaune is uncharacteristically touched and overjoyed when Blake vouches for him as her friend when they visit Menagerie, because he'd never had a friend before. Blake just silently curses his entire family (more) for bringing him up that way.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Nicholas Arc's take on the anomaly that created Mountain Glenn. It was tragic when the mother lost her baby but she made the entirety of the city suffer because she wouldn't accept reality.
• Fun with Acronyms: According to Jaune, ARC Corp stands for Anomalous Research and Containment Corporation.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: This turns out to be the function of the panty anomaly, with Jaune noting that it doesn't seem to have any downsides or side effects; they just boosts the mood of whoever is using them to be more energetic and positive than normal, and appears to actively seek out and attach itself to anyone (well, any woman) it thinks needs the artificial high.
• A God Am I:
  • Played for Laughs, in that Ruby regularly makes announcements to the globe in Jaune's office as though she were their god. Said announcements include "don't abandon your pets", "eating cookies is a religious expression", and "don't do any holy wars".
  • Arc Corp views the Brother Gods as being particularly powerful anomalies who have developed god complexes as a result of their ability to create and destroy matter.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Jaune fervently believes that anomalies don't need to be killed and can be contained instead, but he makes one notable exception: anything that can self-reproduce, like the Rusted Queen. As he explains to Blake, Nicholas Arc's refusal to upgrade the containment facilities has ensured that they can't contain any self-reproducing material, so as much as he hates it, they have to be destroyed or they risk another disastrous containment breach.
  • After their attempt to win the Schnee auction for the Magic 8 Ball legitimately doesn't work, and the sold artifact's power sparks a gang war, the only option ARC Corp sees is to steal it from the buyer in the middle of the conflict. Even after seeing how risky it is, Jaune considers unsealing the Blank Slate in order to use it to pull off the heist, because either the anomaly or its implied drawbacks are too dangerous to be left in the buyer's hands.
  • Mountain Glenn being unsealed prompts all of ARC Corp to go on high alert and prepare some of their most dire contingencies. The entire organization is mobilized for one mission, to enter the city and try to finally find out the source of its anomalous properties and destroy it — all except for one member, deliberately left behind to keep the company running and rebuild in case none of them come back. If all else fails, the powers that be have given permission for all of Vale to be destroyed and left uninhabitable rather than let the anomaly subsume it.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Cruelly subverted in Chapter 18. When Jaune is captured by an anomaly, Blake is forced to run and call for help. The Fist Office agrees to "help" by planning to blow up the building with Jaune in it and promising to find Blake a new boss as soon as they can, while Ozpin just refuses to help altogether due to his past with Arc Corp. Ultimately, Blake has to rescue Jaune with no one but their pet Timothy to help her.
• Grey Goo: Or dull orange goo, but still. The Rusted Queen is a sentient metal oxide that can forcibly rust metal to create more of itself. Arc Corp finds it having taken over a Schnee cargo ship. They're forced to destroy it because it's headed for Vale, and getting access to all the metal in that city could turn it into an apocalyptic disaster.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Chapters 54 and 55 concern Jaune and Blake investigating a house that Blake eventually realizes is stuck in a temporal loop, with the mysterious actions they've being seeing having been performed by themselves during a different part of the loop. They make sure to re-create everything they saw happen throughout the day before escaping the house... only to end up at that office earlier that morning, with Blake transformed into the woman who gave them the job to begin with. Blake goes inside to place the job request to make it a Stable Time Loop, and the two go off to get breakfast to prevent further interaction with their past selves and avoid thinking about how long they may have unknowingly been stuck in the house.
• Heroic BSoD: Jaune underwent one when his mother died, which resulted in him nearly becoming a fire-based anomaly. He had just enough presence of mind to stop a full transformation, with the only remnants being his arms, but it nonetheless led to his family treating him as a ticking time bomb that would only need one more such incident to transform fully. Arc Corp has attempted to keep him emotionally isolated from others ever since to prevent another breakdown from happening, hence their hostility towards Blake's presence.
• Homage: Several elements of Arc Corp as an organization are confirmed by the author to have been inspired by Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina.
• Hive Mind: The anomalous slugs plaguing the Wheat Valley operate on a hive mind, centered on a 'queen'. The range is limited to a few miles, with creatures outside of that left uncoordinated and bestial, but within it they have the capacity to work together. After a lot of discussion, the species is eventually named A Hive of Worms, as the hive mind is the most important thing to know when dealing with them.
• Hypocrite: Saphron’s Fist Office believes in destroying all anomalies due to the harm they cause. Terra’s slaved anomaly is a rifle that shoots stars by plucking them from their original position, which Jaune points out could end any extraterrestrial life that depends on the stolen stars. Possibly even Remnant itself, since it picks a star at random. The harm they could be causing never factors into her mind and she’s not exactly reluctant to use it judging by her behavior.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Ozpin says he participated in the ARC containment failure ages ago because some anomalies were in their custody which had properties that were desperately needed for humanity's survival. Jaune doesn't buy it; while he does sympathize with him, since the anomaly was being imprisoned and used as a power source, at the time the Grimm weren't an existential threat to humanity. This is elaborated on later when Jaune explains how Salem came to be in this timeline, as she was a researcher at Arc Corp whom Ozma seduced as part of his escape plan.
• I Have No Son!: When Blake finally breeches the topic with Raven about the bandit being Yang's mother, the latter denies it. When Blake attempts to push the issue, Raven all but calls herself a Glorified Egg Donor when stating that the title of "mother" should only go to a woman who actually raises a child, which she obviously didn't do, and to lay claim to it would be an insult to her late friend (and Yang's stepmother) Summer.
• I Reject Your Reality: The Mountain Glenn anomaly came from this. A new mother refused to believe that her malformed baby would die or even that carrying to term would likely kill her. When her child inevitably died during the cesarian, she became an anomaly in order to undo its death, coincidentally resetting everyone in the vicinity to their original physical state when her child died. A final message from the doctor even makes it clear that she wasn't in denial, she honestly thought nothing would go wrong in spite of all the medical professionals telling her what the odds were because nothing bad could ever happen to her.
• Implausible Deniability: As it's company policy not to let anything slip about anomalies to non-employees, Jaune spends his first meeting with Blake desperately trying to play off the mountain of growing evidence (including his own actions) that something is seriously wrong with the house that they're in.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • ARC Corp, specifically the Fist Office run by Saphron Arc, are implied to have destroyed Kuroyuri in this timeline, yet Ren and Nora still survived and eventually enrolled in Beacon, albeit as part of Team YWRN (Yarn) alongside Yang and Weiss, due to Ruby, Blake, Jaune, and Pyrrha not attending the school.
  • Despite the different history behind the founding of the Schnee Dust Company, Jacques Schnee still marries his way into the family and is the CEO by the present day, though it's suggested he's only the public face, with Willow and Winter pulling the strings for the anomalous side of the business.
• In Vino Veritas: Blake briefly muses about this while thinking about her relationship with Jaune, begrudgingly admitting that her attraction to Jaune when under the influence of a recent anomaly is a sign that she wants a romantic relationship with him.
• Implied Death Threat: When Ozpin refuses to provide any aid in Blake's attempt to rescue Jaune from the living book anomaly, she warns the headmaster that she would similarly ignore any of his own requests for aid and, moreover, "do what ARC Corp hasn't been capable of"... that is to say, permanently destroy Ozpin.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Coda is this, somehow gaining complete sentience despite having been nothing more than an aimbot that her creator made to cheat in online shooters. For once, Jaune fully admits to Blake that he's just as baffled that such a thing happened to an aimbot of all things, as opposed to a more complex AI, but suggests that they not dwell on it.
• It Amused Me:
  • What Jaune concludes to be the motive behind the Schnee auctions. The family definitely doesn't need the money, and given that items like the Blank Slate ended up in the hands of a Beacon student, they don't seem too concerned about getting maximum profit for selling anomalies either. As such, he can only assume they just get pleasure in whatever mayhem might be caused, an idea that gains more credence when the auction Blake and Roman attend immediately triggers a large-scale gang war.
  • Neo is actually a fragment of an eldritch horror's consciousness who interacts with humanity purely out of curiosity and desire for entertainment, though she has come to value Roman's life in spite of this.
• Jurisdiction Friction:
  • Ozpin and Jaune are perfectly willing to work together to deal with anomalous incidents on the rare instance they have a common goal, but each would rather keep quiet about any anomalies they're currently investigating from each other. There's also some tension about ARC Corp "poaching" potential huntsman and huntresses-in-training, which is part of the reason why Jaune is so hesitant to hire on Ruby, aside from all the child labor laws.
  • Similarly, there is friction between different offices of ARC Corp, particularly in regards to the Fist Office run by Saphron and Terra Arc. In addition to Saphron's authority as being associate director of ARC Corp as a whole, they are typically called in as reinforcements against particularly nasty anomalies, meaning they wind up stepping on the other party's toes more often than not. This is especially the case where the Containments Branch is concerned, as their mission of containing and policing anomalies rather than killing them makes them the least-trusted of any branch, and thus the most subject to Saphron coming in and pulling rank if a situation in Vale is deemed to concern the entire organization.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Discussed. Jaune counters Qrow's argument over the benefits of using the 8-Ball anomaly by pointing out how badly such a mindset can go, listing out several ways Arc Corp used to constantly use anomalies for their own ends, and revealing that one such incident was how the moon was nearly destroyed.
• Kansas City Shuffle: In Chapter 80, when taking calls from members of the Vale anomalous community who are reporting what they know about members of an anomalous terrorist group who are attempting to fight ARC Corp, one of said members calls Blake directly with the promise of ratting out the entire group if she meets him in the old warehouse district. Jaune and Blake know that it's an obvious ambush to kill or take them hostage, but play along knowing it'll be the quickest way to take out the most zealous members of the organization. The following chapter reveals that while it was an ambush, it is one organized by the Albain Brothers, who propose that the Containments Office let the terrorist cell go free and build a community on Menagerie (and presumably work for the White Fang). Since fighting them on it would result in the White Fang exposing everything that's been going on in Vale to the rest of ARC Corp — who would swiftly kill everyone involved, including Jaune and Blake, if they knew — the duo has no choice but to concede.
• Karma Houdini: Roman Torchwick runs off to Mistral with the money he got from selling the stolen dust and doesn't get punished for his crimes.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When trying to convince Ruby that it would be better to allow Ozpin to get his hands on a new Anomaly up for auction, Qrow brings up Summer Rose's death and the thought that said Anomaly's purported powers could have prevented her death. Blake reads him the riot act of how unacceptable that emotional blackmail was.
  • Saphron refuses to even try to rescue Jaune from an anomaly despite Blake’s pleas. Ozpin does the same and cites that it’s because he and Arc Corp aren’t friends due to his Dark and Troubled Past, though he and Jaune aren't actively hostile to each other.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • This turns out to be the weakness of the Welcoming House. It's full of flammables and can't easily do anything about a fire inside it except bleed on it. It also has to open its door in order to let the smoke out of its body.
  • If a throwaway line from Jaune is any indication, one of the Arc family members runs the Burn Office, which is apparently very similar to Nicholas's Blades Office.
  • The Wheat Valley farmers deal with their inexplicably failed fields by burning them all to the ground, hoping to stop whatever is killing their crops from spreading. Though they don't know the whole story, it turns out to be exactly the right move to stop the problem from growing further out of control.
  • The textbook monster is made out of paper. Naturally, one of the main ways to fight back against it is to burn it and its pages.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Subverted. Qrow insists that this is ARC Corp's usual tactic whenever someone learns about anomalies. However, as Jaune explained to Blake during a separate conversation in an earlier chapter, this is only an extreme last-case scenario used if someone actually has proof and absolutely can't be convinced against sharing it. The vast majority of the time, witnesses of ARC Corp operations either keep quiet of their own volition (even if it's because they know no one would believe them) or join the company themselves.
• Leave No Survivors: Blake uses the Lady of the Lake to not only kill Adam, but his entire chapter of the White Fang when they refuse to relinquish Jaune as a hostage.
• Lie to the Beholder: The Welcoming House's illusions appear differently for every target.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: While Jaune seeks to record and contain as many anomalies as possible, and even works alongside them to provide a safe-ish place to live, Nicholas errs on the side of Murder Is the Best Solution and prefers to eliminate all anomalies found. This contrast is also found in their office names; Nicholas runs the Blades Office, while Jaune runs the Containments Office.
• Lilliputians: The globe sitting in Jaune's office is an anomaly, in that it's actually a very small planet inhabited by a society of microscopic people. Blake accidentally kills them all by fiddling with the thing before she knows what it is, but undoes the damage with another anomaly.
• Living Battery: Ozpin reveals that he used to be this while Contained by Arc Corp's predecessors, that he had been used to power coffee machines and computers for centuries via methods he considered torture, hence his grudge against Arc Corp.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Played with. While Jaune is aware that he is considered an anomaly and that his family isn't exactly fond of him, it's unclear whether he knows that his unique status of being one of the few humans to resist a full transformation is the sole reason that he was kept alive, as it made him a valuable research subject for Coral regarding such cases, though Carol insists that he's none-the-wiser. Naturally, Blake's opinion of Jaune's family only manages to sink even lower upon learning this.
  • Meanwhile, Jaune is aware of the hidden society of sentient anomalies in Vale, and even works alongside them to take down any dangerous or violent anomalies that threaten to break the masquerade. Not only does he keep this a secret from the rest of ARC Corp for obvious reasons, but he also hides this from Ozpin.
• Logical Weakness: Jaune explains that sentient anomalies behave the way they do mostly because it's all they can do, meaning that once you figure out what their limits are it's a fairly simple matter to exploit them to escape or kill them. Non-sentient ones are just as likely to have exploitable weaknesses that help mitigate the advantage they give.
  • The Welcoming House has very little ability to influence its victims once they're trapped but before they're dead, so it can't stop them from doing things like starting a house fire. It can also read minds, but not very well. Aside from the fact that Jaune and Blake know that their loved ones cannot be in the house, Jaune's reaction makes it clear that the illusion of his father is incredibly inaccurate in behavior.
  • The Blank Slate renders the holder invisible, even things like worn clothes or held weapons (so no trying the paint trick to See the Invisible), but that only applies to things currently clinging to them, and it doesn't make them invulnerable. Jaune tries throwing a bag of flour to reveal the perp, but while it doesn't quite work, Blake suspects that a face full of flour is still really unpleasant, and the duo are still able to tell roughly where the perpetrator is due to the flour left behind by their footsteps after they flee the room.
• Look Behind You: Ruby does this in Chapter 25 when Yang is grilling her and Qrow about anomalies. Yang scoffs at the attempt, only to glance over anyway and realize that Ruby is pointing at a disheveled child who promptly and happily kills herself after failing to kill Yang as part of a "game", which segues into the Mountain Glenn arc.
  Yang: Fuck me. Okay, that's a good distraction.
• Loophole Abuse: Blake finally convinces Jaune to stop being cagey about what's going on by 'becoming' an employee — applying (demanding he hire her so they can both live), interviewing (answering one incidental question), and getting her first pay in advance (grabbing money out of his wallet).
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The textbook creature's trump card when all else fails is to invoke the power of fiction — literally writing a passage of a story and ensnaring Blake in it, trapping her in a scene where all her loved ones call her a disappointment and the narration urges her to kill herself as penance for her crimes. Jaune stops her from going through with it and breaks the illusion.
• Mad Scientist: Coral Arc is stated verbatim by Jaune to be this in regards to anomalies, collecting them to figure out how they tick, treating her subjects like toys.
• Magic 8-Ball: When ARC Corp infiltrates the Schnee auction in Vale, the anomaly on offer is an unassuming magic 8-ball toy, except it apparently gives specific and accurate answers to any question it's asked. ARC, who are more familiar than most with anomalies and the Schnee family, know it makes no sense for them to sell something as powerful as they're implying this ball is, and deduce there must be a twist or a catch they're leaving out. The ball's answers are only as specific as the asker's knowledge, meaning it can't tell the user anything they don't already know. It's still not technically useless (Blake privately muses that it could serve as a lie detector), but far from the all-seeing oracle everyone was misled into thinking it is.
• Magical Weapon: Members of ARC Corp have been known to utilize SAs, or "Slaved Anomalies", in their work. Terra's weapon, for instance, has been used to shoot stars, while Saphron's fist weapons were capable of easily sending a massive shipping container flying with a single punch.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • Jaune barely reacts to getting stabbed through the hand with a blade. We shortly get some idea why, and he later elaborates: his arms are anomalous and are basically volcanic rock and magma masquerading as scar tissue, leaving him with almost no feeling in them, and most of what he can feel is searing pain so constant that he's gotten used to it.
  • The insane children in Mountain Glenn are very excited to finally see an outsider they can "play" with, as everyone there is "too used to it". Sure enough, when one girl tries to kill someone only to be blocked by aura, she's annoyed and proceeds to demonstrate what's supposed to happen... by slowly and messily carving out her own throat with no hesitation or reaction to the injury.
• The Masquerade:
  • ARC Corp upholds one as part of their mission to contain anomalies.
  • Jaune, to avoid what he views as unnecessary violence, upholds another for all sentient anomalies in Vale. Or, rather, he set the terms of the masquerade and they police themselves. That way, the more kill-happy members of his family don't learn of the community's existence and intervene.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Once an anomaly has been contained or terminated, ARC Corp assigns them a name that references what they are/were. Some of the anomalies Blake and Jaune have encountered so far:
    • The Welcoming House lured in unwitting victims by using illusions to guide them to it, and it took on the appearance of a run-down house. Its previous name, The Missing Few, referred to the missing person cases that sprung up as a result of its actions.
    • The Guardian Weaver, also named Timothy by Jaune, is a giant spider-like creature that wanted to protect Meg Scarlatina from strangers or intruders.
    • The Blank Slate is a tiny briefcase that erases the existence of anyone using it, rendering them unrecognizable to even close friends and family.
    • The Rusted Queen is a form of anomalous rust that takes control over metallic objects to propagate itself.
  • Additionally, the various offices of ARC Corp itself bear names that relate to those offices' methods. The Blades Office, for example, focuses on destroying anomalies; the Fist Office is noted as being as subtle as a punch to the face; and the Containments Office secures anomalies without destroying them, if at all possible.
• Meaningful Rename: According to Jaune, hundreds of years ago there was a series of security breaches that destroyed most of their facilities and killed most of its staff. Jaune’s family were among the only survivors, and they swore to repent for letting the breaches happen, naming themselves Arc after the company so that they’ll always remember the crimes they committed.
• Mercy Kill: Saphron uses this as justification for her attempt to blow up the book anomaly while Jaune is under its control, claiming death is preferable to being an anomaly's thrall. Jaune later confirms that this is company policy.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • Blake inadvertently destroys a planetary civilization by idly spinning a globe; see Apocalypse How.
  • Mountain Glenn is the way it is because of a couple expecting a child, which would be born fatally deformed, but they ignored all of the medical diagnoses telling them that things would go terribly wrong. When the fateful operation was carried out, the newborn passed as expected, and the unhinged grieving mother became anomalous and reversed all death in the area to bring the child back... and would continue to do so every time the baby still couldn't survive, like clockwork. Because of two people who refused to listen to sound medical advice, a small city and its entire population were condemned to endless torment.
• Mirror Character: Pyrrha serves as this to Blake; while both are recently hired members of ARC Corp who were originally going to attend Beacon, Pyrrha was hired through the official process and channels, being vetted by three separate office directors before being reached out to, while Blake basically hired herself in the middle of an emergency and is only begrudgingly approved retroactively by other offices. Both of their first anomalies dealt with were living buildings that they killed, but Pyrrha's was a pocket dimension that trapped her for years, while Blake's was a man-eating house that she was stuck in for a few hours. Finally, Pyrrha's a Nice Girl who shares Saphron's belief that all anomalies should be exterminated, while Blake a Knight in Sour Armor who shares Jaune's stance that most anomalies should only be contained at worst.
• Mirthless Laughter: After the true nature of the anomalous 8-ball is revealed, Jaune can't help but break into despairing laughter. It's nowhere near as powerful and dangerous as potential buyers were led to believe, which is good, but that also means that the Schnee deliberately sparked a gang war that killed hundreds, based on a lie.
• Missing Mom: Juniper Arc. It's later revealed that she died on the outskirts of Mountain Glenn, meaning that unbeknownst to her family, she was close enough to the city to become subject to the effects of its anomaly. Blake encounters her ten years later, still attempting to research and stop the anomaly.
• Mistaken for Gay: Inverted. Blake is so clueless about Ilia's interest in her that she thought Ilia was crushing on Adam, not her.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Invoked. When Qrow threatens to reveal everything about anomalies and Arc Corp to Taiyang, Ruby counters by saying that would mean explaining everything about Ozpin as well, and she could easily frame the old man's fixation on her coming to Beacon as this, which would lead to him questioning why Qrow is doing nothing to protect her. Qrow immediately relents.
• Mistaken for Romance: Due to their closeness, several characters assume that Blake and Jaune are romantically involved at first glance, with them expressing surprise, confusion, or disbelief whenever Blake (and sometimes Jaune) insists this isn't the case. For her part, Blake explains to Ruby at one point that Jaune himself isn't the reason for her being disgusted by the idea, though she doubts they would make a good couple considering her (and especially his) copious amounts of baggage, but rather the rest of Arc family. She eventually does develop feelings for Jaune, to her chagrin and everyone else's smugness, but she still dislikes the assumption that they have to be dating.
  Blake: He's not my lover. Bloody hell, will everyone stop just assuming that? He's my boss, my friend, and we have blueberry muffins together. We're work colleagues.
• Money Is Not Power: Mountain Glenn was started thanks to a rich couple who couldn't understand that their money was not enough to save their fatally malformed baby, or that being rich would stop bad things from happening to them.
• Motive Rant: Played With. Blake tries to force Winter into one, but Winter shrugs off the attempt, lampshading that there's no reason for her to do so. However, this is only because she views Blake as little more than a Living Emotional Crutch for Jaune, the opponent she actually cares about. Once he joins the fight, she does stop attacking in order to gloat and explain that her plan was to force Jaune to his breaking point in order to see how much of his humanity he can maintain, as she has many investors eager to pay to have their own anomaly powers while keeping their minds. Antagonizing Jaune (the only person who has ever accomplished this) is the best way to experiment with such a thing.
• Muggles: Aura and Semblances are themselves a product of Light of the Soul, some kind of infectious anomaly that by the present has spread to all of humanity. All, we're told, except Jaune, who claims not to have it and if one were to try and unlock his aura, they would find nothing to unlock. Ultimately Subverted, as Jaune has other anomalous powers, and the working theory is that gaining those powers has made him incompatible with Light of the Soul.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: At some point, the slug queen infected the matriarch of a Wheat Valley family. It's suggested their actions from that point on stemmed in part from the madness of grief and denial. Jaune supposes that they don't believe she's dead at all, and her rotted appearance, inhuman movement, and speaking in tongues are just illness and dementia. Someone in the family appears to have even slept next to the woman's infested cadaver.
• Mundane Solution:
  • The Hive of Worms anomaly was kept pretty well contained by farmers who treated it like any blight on their crops: burning infected fields to kill pathogens before they spread. The biggest reason it didn't fix everything was that there was a Hive Queen they needed to kill as well.
  • When coming to Beacon hunting an anomaly for the second time, the cover Jaune and Blake use for the investigation is to disguise one of them as a sniffer dog, which should be beneath suspicion when people see it searching through girls' underwear for an anomalous, apparently wandering, pair of panties. They don't have any luck between the two of them... only for an actual dog to instantly track down the target by finding underwear that smells like it's been worn by dozens of people.
• Mundanger:
  • Jaune's first case two years prior to the story wasn't an anomaly at all but rather a 12 year old serial killer. It nearly gets him killed when he assumed the axe was the cause only for the boy to try and go for his father's rifle.
  • While the disappearances in Menagerie did deal with an anomaly, they began as a mundane case of kidnapping and faunus trafficking. By the time Blake and Jaune investigate matters, the whole operation and most of the captives are already dead after one victim turned anomalous due to stress.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Most of Arc Corp's modus operandi. Jaune, who believes all anomalies should be contained if possible, and Coral, who enjoys researching and experimenting on them, are the exceptions to this and considered the family black sheep as a result.
• Mutually Exclusive Magic: A limitation shared by all anomalies is that they are incompatible with each other — an anomaly's effect cannot be used on another anomaly, and a person can only have one anomalous attribute at a time. As Aura itself is an anomaly, people who have become fully or partially anomalous (like Jaune) or who have fallen under the influence of another anomaly (like the Twilight Citizens) lose the power of Aura and Semblances in the process]].
• Nerves of Steel: In sharp contrast to Blake, Jaune tends to keep a cool head when dealing with anomalies, mainly because he's been dealing with them longer and knows how to tell if the anomaly in question is hostile or not, in addition to being trained to at least fake calmness during a high stress situation.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • Jaune is shown to have a strong and excited fascination for the anomalies.
  • Ruby's immediate reaction to the Guardian Weaver — which is a dog-sized spider with a human-like face — is to hug it, call it cute, and croon over like it's an actual dog.
• Non-Malicious Monster:
  • The Guardian Weaver (or Timothy, as he is later named) may look like a giant monster spider, but he's ultimately harmless. Or, rather, isn't easily provoked. Jaune's first observation of him is that he's been in the Scarletina house for a long time, yet has never once made a violent move against anyone inside. Indeed, it would rather find a nice place to hide if personally threatened, only turning violent to protect others.
  • Blake and Jaune occasionally encounter benevolent wild anomalies while on missions, some of which they opt to never report in order to prevent the rest of the organization from killing helpful creatures who are otherwise already keeping a low profile.
• Noodle Incident: After Blake starts asking Jaune about how the Fist Office operates, Jaune asks Blake if she knows about Kuroyuri, to which Blake replies "no."
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Ruby is noted to have been in the bottom ten percent in unarmed combat in Signal. That's not a great sign when you're at a Huntsmen-in-Training academy, but among normal people, she's pretty much unstoppable even without Crescent Rose.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Not all anomalies are out to kill people or what have you. Either way, they can't be seen by the public so ARC Corp needs to track them down and deal with them.
  • The creature haunting the Scarlatina home is profoundly creepy and scares Blake half to death, but Jaune is fairly sure it doesn't want to hurt anyone (if it did, it would have already) and is just curious about the newcomers. At seeing more of its behavior, the conclusion Jaune comes to is that it's protective of things familiar to it, Blake is similar enough to the house's normal occupants that it recognizes her, and Jaune is different enough that it's trying to protect her from him. The one time she does lash out and strike it in fear, it's not only physically but emotionally hurt because it was only trying to help. The duo end up adopting the creature after the mission.
  • With the Wheat Valley slugs, it's a bit more ambiguous. At a basic level they are little more than unusually hungry and fast-breeding animals following their instincts, but the 'queen' which coordinates them is shown to have a much greater degree of intelligence, to the point it's suggested it was manipulating the family that was housing it.
• Not So Similar: Blake occasionally compares Jaune and Adam whenever the former places her into a situation where she must kill or maim someone, only to immediately dismiss the thought each time on these grounds: Jaune only asks such of her as a last resort in the same of self-preservation, while Adam always desired to instigate violence. This ends up extending to why she's attracted to them; saying that they're both strong, passionate, and driven men who sometimes feel larger than life, before noting that Jaune is a far better person than her ex.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Blake and Jaune never learn exactly what the Welcoming House does to reduce its victims to skeletons, only that it doesn't seem to involve a struggle and most of the bodies were probably piled in the basement after death somehow.
  • ARC Corp finds the 'queen' of the Wheat Valley slugs in a farm family's house. They don't bother to learn the full extent of it once they've confirmed its existence, as either way it needs to be burnt to ash, but a glance at its host body alone hints at something gruesome and visceral.
• Obliviously Evil: The textbook monster only cares about improving humanity's interest in learning, and doesn't seem to realize that dooming hundreds of young people to a slow death for not already knowing historical or mathematical trivia is an evil act. It doesn't even seem to realize that it's not just a perfectly normal human being anymore.
• Oblivious to Love: Like in canon, Blake doesn't even suspect that Ilia might be into her. Even more, she thinks that Ilia actually has a crush on Adam, having assumed that all the annoyed glares she's seen Ilia give Adam over the years were directed at her.
• Occult Law Firm: Anomalous & Sons. After Matchmaker became anomalous, they contacted him and advised him on how to become Reality Class, though after he breaches their confidentiality, they dispose of him and hand Jaune the information to shut his app down. Later, they help Jaune and Blake negotiate finer terms to a Lady of The Lake deal obligating the Lady two agreed-upon days of possession.
• Oh, Crap!: Hazel states that this was Salem's immediate reaction upon getting an update about what Cinder was doing in Vale, with him receiving little instruction outside the need to assure Arc Corp that she had absolutely nothing to do with Cinder's plans to steal from the organization, and that she'll kill the woman herself if it means avoiding conflict.
• Old Money: The Arc family is technically this as they have access to the vast resources Arc Corp has accumulated over the generations. While Jaune only really makes use of the money for business-related expenses — at which point he goes overboard and throws around hundreds of thousands for purchases, even considering three million to be a paltry amount — he pushes Blake to make more personal use of her "starter salary" (which is already three times the average for Vale) from time-to-time, at one point insisting that she splurge at an expensive spa to ease her stress.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Jaune brings up an anomaly called the “Blood that Feeds”, a disease that gives victims a craving for blood. They'll remain alive so long as they continue to consume blood, but their bodies will eventually rot away until they're essentially “walking sacs of blood”. The mythical vampire was made up as part of a cover story when the disease broke out across Mistral a few hundred years ago.
• Overpopulation Crisis: Vale is said to be having one in the first chapter, something both Blake and Jaune note. It's revealed that the whole run-down neighborhood they're both stuck in doesn't actually exist and is an illusion, because that many abandoned houses make no sense; once the illusion break, the two end up in a garbage-filled alleyway.
• Panty Thief: The Blank Slate's user has a habit of stealing female students' underwear.
• Parasitic Horror: ARC Corp is called to investigate a farming community whose fields are randomly dying. The reason is revealed on their second day, when in one of the rotting fields they find a dead body... which then starts moving again. When they try to re-kill it, a swarm of tiny slugs pour out of the wounds, and Jaune breaks open one of the crops to find the same. One farming family had been using these anomalous creatures to target other fields, but as the perpetrator found out, they're just as happy to eat people from the inside out if one isn't careful.
• Perception Filter:
  • While initially suspected to merely be an Invisibility Cloak or something, the Blank Slate is ultimately revealed to be an anomaly that prevents the holder from being noticed. Invisibility is the most obvious effect, but it becomes more intense as it's used, wiping away evidence of the person's presence, then their history, then their very identity and existence. The invisible pervert in Beacon has abused it so much that no record of them can be found in school or public databases, no one recognizes them, no one can make out any identifying details even while staring right at them, and even the user can no longer recall who they were. Jaune suspects that the final step would be making the holder so unnoticeable that they are Ret-Gone.
  • I AM DOG, as the name implies, is a collar that causes the wearer to be perceived by outside observers as a dog; right down to their speech coming across as barking and anything they're holding being seen as being held in their mouths. The only person who isn't under the perception is whoever is holding the leash attached the collar.
• Pet Monstrosity: The Weaver Guardian quickly becomes the office pet when Jaune and Blake catch it and name it Timothy. It likes affection, hugs, and pets, and Jaune can feed it from his hand. It especially warms up to Ruby and anticipates her arrival when she starts feeding it as part of her work-study, and even Blake eventually gets used to having it around and treating it as a bizarre dog.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Downplayed and Played for Laughs in regards to Jaune and Blake's first official mission. Jaune quickly comes to the conclusion that the anomaly in the Scarlatina residence isn't dangerous because it had not done the residents any harm despite having had plenty of opportunities to do so. As such, Jaune is calm and relaxed when it comes over and looms over him in his sleep. Unfortunately, he hadn't bothered to inform Blake of his analysis, assuming that this information was obvious. Cue Blake spending several hours stressed out and paranoid, and eventually panicking upon finally seeing it. She rightfully punches him in the gut for not mentioning the anomaly's harmlessness.
  • Jaune tells Blake that this is the reason behind his awkward relationship with Coda, an anomalous AI. He was so convinced that they were secretly evil that by the time they finally got on the same page, too much damage had been done for them to become anything other than begrudging acquaintances.
• Posthumous Character:Downplayed. Adam is alive when he enters the story, but he doesn't stick about long and he's talked about by other characters far more after his death. Mainly by Blake, with there being a solid stretch where she thinks about him or brings him up in conversation almost every chapter due to the Containments Branch begrudgingly entering an agreement with the White Fang.
• Power at a Price: While many non-sentient anomalies allow the holder to perform strange feats or warp reality in impossible ways, they just as often have drawbacks that offset their advantages. That in itself is a reason ARC Corp must keep them out of the public's hands — not only the damage they can cause to others with their abuse but the damage they can cause to themselves not knowing the cost of their reckless actions.
  • Jaune's camera can reverse time by sixty seconds for anything it takes a picture of (including frames of video). But it incurs a debt of equal magnitude on the holder's own lifespan, forcefully aging them forwards at the same time it rewinds targets backward.
  • The Blank Slate hides the holder from sight... then from public record, then from history, memory, and causality, which persists after the anomaly is taken away. Even their identity at a conceptual level is hidden, so much so that people staring right at them can't distinguish any details about them at all, and overuse results in the holder eventually forgetting everything about themselves as well.
  • The Lady of The Lake is a fae entity that resides in a book, that combines this trope with Deal with the Devil and Jerkass Genie as it asks for something equivalent (according to its own definition anyway) in exchange for what is asked. It can also put whoever uses it under a Geas that renders them unable to reveal this information to anyone else, and briefly control their body in order to aid in fulfilling a bargain or keep them quiet.
• Power Perversion Potential: Triple-A Cases (Abuse of Anomalous Artifact Cases) sometimes contain these. During Chapter 5, Ozpin hires Jaune and Blake to find whichever student is using an anomalous item to sneak into the dorms of teams with female members.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Roman gives a Schnee auction invitation to Arc Corp because he considers the anomalies far too risky and dangerous to even consider trying to steal or take advantage of them. His first-hand experience seeing the Rusted Queen means he doesn't want anything like that near Vale. It's hinted to involve standards as well since he does seem concerned about the mass destruction an errant anomaly could cause.
• Prolonged Prologue: The first ten chapters essentially consist of the "intro" to the fic as a whole, with the mini-arcs within covering non-sapient anomalies and ARC Corp as a whole, sapient but non-violent anomalies, anomalous items and Jaune and Ozpin's relationship, and finally the relationships between various ARC Corp offices alongside the new history of the SDC.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The slugs from The Hive of Worms are shown capable of taking control of human bodies they've infected as puppets, first shown when the corpse of the person holding a bucket of them is reanimated by them then by having them crawl inside his corpse. In that case the most they can manage is random jerking and flailing, but when they are within spitting distance of their Hive Mind queen, they become coordinated enough to do things like crawl up stairs.
• Rapid Aging: Jaune's non-sentient anomaly camera, which as a side effect of its main property causes the holder to age sixty seconds whenever a picture is taken. He originally found it in the possession of a photographer who looked decrepit and was dying of organ failure, but was legally nineteen.
• Reality Warper: Annabelle, an anomalous faunus, had the power to warp reality around her based on her dreams. It's powerful enough that, when she was murdered, her desire to survive transformed her into a living teddy bear.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jaune gives Pyrrha one after the latter's rants against anomalies lead to her claiming that he might secretly be working against ARC Corp due to his status as one. He pulls rank to reminder her that he holds enough power in ARC Corp to make a case for her removal, before chewing her out for her attitude, noting that her deep-seated fear of anomalies means she's bound to burn out and become useless to them, or worse, the stress will become too much and she'll become an anomaly herself.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Zig-Zagged. Trying to benefit off of anomalies resulted in the mass security breach that destroyed the original ARC Corp, so the current company finds the idea of trying to sell them abhorrent. This puts then in direct opposition to the Schnee family, which collects and sells anomalies in underground auctions, in addition to selling Dust (which is secretly created by an anomaly).
• Refuge in Audacity: ARC Corp is a legitimately, and accurately, registered business. People can look them up and call them at any time if they see strange happenings. How does that fit in with the vow of secrecy? Rather than The Men in Black they're supposed to be, ARC shows up to the scene acting like a team from a ghost or cryptid hunting TV show for (and by) foolish idiots. Which itself puts people more at ease than they could have been, as at least one client dreaded them turning up looking like the Ghostbusters.
• Related in the Adaptation: The wife of Nicholas Schnee in this universe was none other than an Arc woman named Serenity. They betrayed ARC Corp together, running off with an anomaly that they used to found the SDC. This makes Jaune and his sisters second cousins of Weiss, Winter, and Whitley; something that Winter happily brings up whenever she taunts Jaune.
• Reset Button: One anomaly Jaune has custody of is a reality-warping camera, that reverses time by sixty seconds for anything it takes a picture of at the cost of aging the user the same amount. After horrifically wiping out Jaune's globe of tiny people, Blake doesn't hesitate to fix it when he nonchalantly lets her know about the camera on the dresser next to it.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Jaune has a stilted view of how much Lien is worth. He casually drops thousands of Lien in suits (though he justifies it by saying that it's a company expense) and feels legitimately bad that Blake 'only' makes 180,000 Lien annually in her job. For context, the average salary is 60,000 with 25,000 being the minimum wage. He even promises Blake's parents that she could make 200,000 after the probationary period. Both Blake and her parents are stunned and grateful. Though that instance is probably justified, as given the horrors that Arc Corp regularly has to face, Jaune probably feels he isn't paying Blake enough: the pay doesn't exactly scale regards of whether you're dealing with an overgrown spider, a man-eating house, or a city full of constantly reviving undead, after all.
• Riddle for the Ages: The Beacon student who used the Blank Slate anomaly. Their identity is completely erased from public records, memories, and even direct contact, to the point that even people looking directly at them can't see anything distinguishing, though they're heavily implied to be male and confirmed to use a sword. The author claims readers could eventually rule it out based on whoever doesn't appear at Beacon throughout the entire story, but since Jaune and Blake's first visit only has them meet Teams YWRN and CFVY, that doesn't narrow down the list that far.
• Sanity Slippage: Even if an anomaly doesn't explicitly affect the mind, their effects on the rules of reality aren't meant for human minds to cope with. The citizens of Mountain Glenn, afflicted by the city's anomaly, did not immediately descend into insanity. It's only after twenty years dying a painful death every day only for that not to matter, having their sense of consequence eroded away, and being cut off from civilization that the entire population has devolved into homicidal freaks.
• Sapient House: Blake first gets exposed to ARC Corp and the secret world of paranormal phenomena they tangle with when she becomes the victim of one: a living creature in the shape of a house that uses illusions to lure prey inside to digest. Skeletons are littered throughout the house's interior (especially the basement), the interior and exits are all far tougher than real building material, and instead of pipes and wiring underneath the walls there is pulsating flesh. Eventually it's named the Welcoming House at Blake's tentative suggestion.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Blake serves as this to Jaune, as despite her originally believing that he's totally incompetent, she still followed his lead and trusts his judgement. As they grow closer, Blake isn't shy about making it clear that her loyalties lie firmly with her best friend rather than the organization as a whole, and is fully willing to break company rules and etiquette when needed to defend and protect him.
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: After her experience at a furry sex convention featuring actual anthro attendants, Blake has Jaune hose her down with a high-powered pressure washer to try and feel physically and spiritually clean again.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Roman Torchwick witnesses the destruction of the Rusted Queen and thus is aware that there are more monsters than just the Grimm on Remnant, but he's in no condition to reveal anything he witnessed publicly.
  • Yang becomes one after she convinces Ruby to help her tail Qrow on one of his missions, leading them to a secret pub frequented by sapient anomalies.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Twilight City, spoken of with dire seriousness at ARC Corp, is the city of Mountain Glenn, which twenty years ago fell under the influence of an anomaly and was sealed off in response. With no idea exactly what was causing the problem, the world's governments were forced to quarantine the city, preventing the inhabitants from getting out and anyone outside from seeing it. The best they can do stopping it breaking free of their control is to firebomb the whole city like clockwork, hopefully leaving few enough survivors for the day that they can't accomplish anything. Unfortunately, mundane White Fang terrorists don't know what kind of mess they're digging into, breach the containment, and a few get out — it's only a matter of time before word spreads inside and the breach becomes an apocalypse-level catastrophe.
• Series Continuity Error: The original version of Chapter 50 had Coral stay behind in the lab to comb through all the information she could, while Pyrrha accompanied Blake and Jaune to go even deeper into the Schnee Manor to locate All Becomes Dust on the basis that Saphron secretly ordered her to keep an eye on Jaune for any anomalous behavior, though they still had the equipment needed for Coral to communicate with them and comment on any findings. Chapter 51 would then proceed to have Coral present with the duo, with no mention of Pyrrha at all. After the release of Chapter 52, Chapter 50 was edited to have Coral follow them while Pyrrha stayed behind to deter any enemies, with minimal changes to dialogue in order to reflect this.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Jaune and Blake are regularly assumed to be romantically involved at first glance by several characters, prompting Blake to shoot down the notion whenever it comes up; be it with her mother, Jaune's family members, Ruby, etc. When pressed on the matter, Blake admits that she isn't necessarily adverse to a relationship with Jaune, though she does think they have too much collective baggage to make it work. No, the real problem is that she eventually wants kids, and the idea of having his family anywhere near her future offspring is the worst thing she could ever imagine.
  Blake: You'd have to be either madly in love or deeply disturbed to want to bring a child into the world under that name. I've seen what they do to their children, Ruby, and I'll die before one of my own is put through that.
• Shout-Out: The fic is a combination of the SCP Foundation and Lobotomy Corporation with its anomalies and organizations dedicated to recording, containing, and eliminating them. It also holds some inspiration from Library of Ruina, as the various offices of ARC Corp are somewhat inspired by Fixer Offices.
  • The Blood that Feeds, the anomalous blood disease Jaune brings up in the first chapter, seems to have been inspired by SCP-610, the Flesh that Hates. They even have similar names.
  • The Schnee Family supposedly makes their fortune by auctioning off anomalous artifacts, with nary a care for how they're used — which is very similar to the SCP Foundation's Marshal, Carter, and Dark.
  • The uniforms of the various offices appear to be inspired by different Associations from Library of Ruina.
    • The Containments Office wears a black suit under a blue jacket, which, while not outright stated, points to them being inspired by the Zwei Association.
    • The Fist Office uniform is outright stated to look like the Liu Association uniforms - a black suit under a red coat lined with gold detailing.
  • The transformed humans are extremely similar to Distortions from Library of Ruina - people driven over the Despair Event Horizon, and who have transformed into something akin to anomalies, obsessively chasing after whatever drove them to distort. The fact that Distortions often have their heads transformed into an animal or inanimate object is just the icing on the cake.
    • Jaune's partial transformation into an anomaly is very reminiscent of Philip's E.G.O. form, with the death of a loved one resulting in his arms being transformed and him gaining the power to Kill It with Fire. As it stands, the rest of ARC Corp is trying to prevent him from completing the allusion and becoming something similar to the Crying Children.
• Sins of the Father: Ozpin makes it clear when refusing to help Blake save Jaune that he considers all the Arcs just as deserving of his grudge.
• Situational Sword: Jaune's sword Crocea Mors is an anomaly in this setting. Under most circumstances it's nothing but a normal sword, but when a living anomaly is nearby, its blade emits incredibly bright light and fiery heat all around it. Jaune habitually keeps it sheathed even while fighting with it, because a seconds-long peek at part of the blade is enough to badly burn even the holder's skin (whether they have aura or not).
• Skewed Priorities: Jaune generally tends to act more worried about disappointing his family and upholding the company's secrecy than immediate physical danger. Blake, a comparatively normal person, cannot for the life of her understand how he's more fazed by the idea of talking to his dad than dying helplessly never to be heard from again.
• Something Only They Would Say: A variant in Chapter 96, where Jaune immediately realizes that Blake's body is being possessed by the Lady of the Lake because she's smiling. When the fae questions if her host really is that much of a grump, Jaune explains that Blake does smile on occasion. Just that the current situation definitely isn't something that would illicit one from her.
• Spanner in the Works: Blake, to an extent. In Chapter 26, it is revealed that Arc Corp has spent years trying to make Jaune unable to develop any close relationships, believing such a thing would inevitably lead to him completely succumbing to his anomalous nature should said colleague perish, only for Blake to show up and befriend him before they could learn of her presence and get rid of her. While Saphron is miffed by this, Nicholas eventually sees this as a boon once it becomes clear how attached Blake is to his son, reasoning that it's valuable to have someone who will be actively motivated to actually keep Jaune stable.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: I AM DOG allows Blake to understand Zwei as if he were speaking when she's wearing it. Jaune didn't know about this aspect of the anomaly, though he admits it is possible it was never tested with a dog whose Aura had been unlocked, which is somewhat of a rarity.
• Stalker without a Crush: Ruby got involved with Jaune and Arc Corp because she saw him hunting an anomaly and followed him around because he claimed to be Huntsman tracking a Grimm. When Blake jokingly asks if her obsession with becoming a member of the organization extends to any romantic interest in Jaune after she compares her devotion to getting hired to her mother's ten year quest to bed Taiyang, Ruby is horrified at the notion. Chapter 67 reveals that Ruby actually does have a crush on him, with her becoming even more embarrassed when Blake expresses confusion over the idea that said crush was supposed to be a secret.
• Stripped to the Bone: The victims of the flesh-eating house are reduced to skeletons.
• Super-Strength: Saphron's Slaved Anomaly is a pair of gloves that let her do things like punch a man dozens of feet through the air or launch entire shipping containers at cannon speed. Blake, who knows what superhuman strength really looks like, realizes they must have a more specific and strange effect than just "strength", because Saphron's movements and the effects they cause on targets don't match up.
• Sweet Tooth: Ruby has her canon love of cookies, while Blake finds herself taking a liking to the blueberry muffins Jaune orders from a local bakery.
• Tagalong Kid:
  • Downplayed with Ruby. She spends the first few dozen chapters badgering Jaune about working for ARC Corp, eventually getting him to let her work at the Containments Office for a week to fulfill the work experience requirement her school has and becoming their office-sitter afterwards. Since she's a Huntress-in-training, she does manage to carry her weight when she does end up in field alongside Jaune and Blake, even managing to save them both after the two are trapped by the farmers exploiting the Wheat Valley anomaly. It doesn't stop Jaune from disliking that she's so adamant about becoming a part of the business, temporarily firing her at one point and telling Blake he has no plans to hire her full-time once she turns 17, but this is purely because he doesn't want to see a friend get hurt as opposed to thinking Ruby is a hinderance.
  • Played with in regards to Amber, Jaune's youngest sister. She ends up having to intern at the Containments Office due to staffing issues caused by the Mountain Glenn incident necessitating that both her and Lavender (Jaune's other younger sister) quickly be brought up to speed and start running their own offices. She's still helpful due to at least having a theoretical knowledge of everything to do with anomalies, but her presence nevertheless frustrates all parties involved: the rest of ARC Corp wouldn't have sent her to Jaune if they had an actual choice, Jaune and Blake are put off by having to deal with a spoiled brat who hates the former and will happily snitch on any suspicious activity, and Amber herself hates the thought of working under her anomalous brother at the only branch of the organization that isn't about killing all anomalies on sight.
    Blake: Please tell me we're not going to have to babysit some genocidal mini-Saphron.
    Jaune: I mean, I'm going to have to babysit. You're just going to have to put up with her.
• Take That!: Jaune delivers one to The Twilight Saga and other supernatural romance fiction by describing the Blood that Feeds, an anomalous blood disease that served as the inspiration for the vampire myth in-universe, outright stating that it’s nothing like popular media has said about them. Blake even decides to burn her fantasy novels after hearing him.
• Technical Pacifist: How the Containments Branch of ARC Corp operates. As their name implies, their modus operandi is containing and monitoring anomalies, only resorting to the usual killing and destruction that the rest of the organization partakes in if a particular anomaly's very existence is dangerous. This softer approach makes the Containments Branch subject to a lot of derision and suspicion from other branches, which isn't entirely unjustified seeing as how Jaune and Blake's operations do hide some of their activities and findings in order to protect the lives of more peaceful (and sometimes sapient) anomalies from the wider company's notice. Not the least of which includes hiding the existence of Vale's entire anomalous population.
• Teens Are Monsters: Jaune's first case as lead investigator had him investigating a series of mysterious deaths. After originally assuming it to have been an anomaly, Jaune instead discovered that it was a twelve-year-old serial killer who was killing people with an axe and hiding the bodies around the village. Jaune even tried to take the axe out of his hand thinking it was an anomaly, only for the kid to go for his father's hunting rifle and force Jaune to put him down.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • Jaune and Ozpin openly dislike each other, but they do agree that anomalies shouldn't be abused. When the latter comes across a potential anomaly, he will tell Jaune about it so he can handle it (assuming it isn't something he can use himself) and he helps cover it up to keep the peace. And despite the constant barbs, their relationship is far more civil compared to Ozpin's relationship with the rest of ARC Corp, as while Jaune simply wants to see him contained, his father wants Ozpin dead and tried to kill him the last time he was in Vale.
  • Jaune and Saphron are clearly tense during the investigation of the Rusted Queen and spend a lot of the investigation sniping at each other.
  • Blake, Coral, and Jaune aren't fond of Pyrrha being part of their squad during the assault on Schnee Manor, due to her sharing Saphron's black-and-white "kill 'em all" mentality towards anomalies and because she's obviously been given orders to kill Jaune at the first sign of anomalous behavior. Likewise, Pyrrha doesn't trust any of them due to the trio being clear anomaly sympathizers.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: According to Jaune, this is the Fist Office's specialty, being as subtle as, well, a fist to the face. They're supposedly behind the destruction of Kuroyuri.
• To Serve Man: Everything that All Becomes Dust devours or touches becomes Dust, with the Schnee using kidnapped and captured Faunus to serve as food for the beast.
• Token Evil Teammate: While Roman Torchwick isn't an employee of ARC Corp or the Containments Office, his prior experience assisting them against the Rusted Queen means that when he's invited to a Schnee Anomaly Auction shortly afterward, he wastes no time alerting Jaune and Blake about it and gets partnered up with Blake in order to infiltrate the auction.
• Torches and Pitchforks: A more controlled variant. Ruby, under Jaune's instructions, gathers a crowd of farmers to go after the Risgby family after finding out they were responsible for the destroyed farmland. Ruby does all the heavy lifting to take down perpetrators while the crowd stays outside then ties up the family responsible afterwards. Blake worries they might enact Vigilante Justice, though they're calm enough to let them get arrested instead.
• Touch of Death: Jaune's hands and arms, burning hot beneath his Conspicuous Gloves, incinerate anything they touch when uncovered. Jaune uses this to destroy the book anomaly and kill the trafficker he hunts down on Menagerie.
• Trap Is the Only Option: When Weiss visits the office to warn Jaune and Blake that Winter is planning another auction, this time with an anomaly capable of curing anomalous inflictions, they immediately realize that it's a trap meant specifically for Jaune, since such a thing can't exist. However, they decide to go anyway as an excuse to directly confront them, especially since ignoring it could cause major issues on its own regardless of it really is a cure or not.
• Tunnel of Love: The name of the first anomaly that Pyrrha faced as part of the Fist Office. It creates a separate timeline with a Year Inside, Hour Outside effect to see if the people inside can deal with being alone with each other for five years before its real body appears and devours them, with the emotions returned to the original timeline's versions of the people, who, while not able to remember the five years inside, are still able to feel if they still love or loathe the other person.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • Part of the reason why the system of ranking anomalies was changed was because people were using it as a way to judge danger level, not realizing even low-ranked ones could be an ample threat. Instead, the new classification system is based on how much of a danger it is to causing a Broken Masquerade.
  • Blake initially underestimates Jaune's competence due to her poor first impression of him. This lessens over time as they work together to take down dangerous anomalies, with her developing greater respect for him in the process, but she nevertheless continues to act as his bodyguard and express concern for his wellbeing since he completely lacks Aura and is at risk of fully turning into an anomaly if things go wrong.
  • Chapter 46 ends on this note, with Blake suddenly reminded that despite moonlighting as a saleswoman with a love of antagonizing Jaune whenever possible, Winter is still an accomplished huntress that has far more fighting experience than her.
• Unperson: The Beacon student who used the Blank Slate gradually had all traces of their identity scrubbed from reality, to the point that people looking directly at them can't even tell if they have hair, much less their identity.
• Unwanted Spouse: Juniper was this to Nicholas. Blake learns from Juniper herself that Nicholas not only had no affection for his wife, but that he had no interest in romance whatsoever, being firmly Married to the Job. It was only when she framed a possible relationship as a business dealing in which she would help turn out new employees in the form of children who could be born and raised in the Arc Corp mindset that he decided to marry her.
• Volleying Insults: Jaune and Ozpin don't like each other and neither tries to hide that fact. As far as Jaune is concerned, Ozpin is a parasitic worm that needs to be contained like all the rest and dislikes him for having a hand in the releasing of other anomalies in the past, while Ozpin thinks ARC Corp goes too far in its methods and that humans and anomalies can coexist. For what it's worth, Ozpin still sees Jaune in a better light than the rest of the organization due to his more lax practices, while Jaune does agree that the rest of his family often goes too far (but nevertheless views Ozpin as a fool who is far too idealistic for his own good).
• Was Once a Man: The textbook monster is under the impression that it's just a normal person with a book-related Semblance. After the incident is dealt with, it becomes clear that it was originally a person, even if it wasn't at the end. The Fist Office had just got done dealing with their own mission, which similarly dealt with someone who was originally human.
• We Have Reserves: Ozpin implies that this is why the Arcs have so many children.
• Welcome to My World: After Blake and Jaune's youngest sister Amber (who is working as an intern) survive being teleported to an alternate dimension by a house, where they barely avoid getting killed by the natives, Blake jokes that she'll develop a phobia of houses at this rate. When Amber is incensed that her and Jaune are just joking about the fact that they nearly died, Blake points out nearly dying to an anomaly is what an average week looks like.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Jaune and Blake discover that the San Valeo anomaly invokes this, with it trapping people in an illusionary world from midnight to sunrise while altering their moods and personalities to match. The duo aren't happy to realize that they become a rather amorous couple under the effects of the anomaly, waking up after their first night on the island to learn that they wouldn't stop kissing and groping each other, and had tried to have sex before Jaune's arms got in the way.
• Wolf Man: ARC Corp is aware of a sentient species which they tentatively call "werewolves" because they might have inspired some of that folklore, even though they personally don't like it. They have a society of their own in the wilderness outside human territory and number hundreds of thousands in all. ARC isn't even sure if they are actually "anomalous" in the same logic-bending sense as their normal business as opposed to just biologically strange, but they're certainly unusual and diplomatically dangerous so they make it their job anyway. Though they have human-like intellect, they are not humans, and their culture and behavior are so different as to make open coexistence impossible. The only peaceful contact there is is a regular gathering between a minority of fetishists on both sides, which ARC grudgingly allows because their attempts to stop it turned into a PR nightmare, and they'd rather supervise to make sure none of the costumed humans learn too much.
• The Worm That Walks: Humans whose bodies are used as hosts by the slugs from The Hive of Worms qualify, acting as a glorified suit for the colonies.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: As a child, Jaune touched an anomaly he shouldn't have, and now his arms are burnt and still burning up to the shoulder. As far as he knows, they're going to be like that for the rest of his life.
  • Averted when it's revealed that the burns are the result of his partial transformation into an anomaly, though the end result is basically the same.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Jaune's camera came from someone who was aged about 61 years by its effect of aging the user one minute per picture. That would mean the 19-year-old photographer somehow took 32,061,600 photos. At one photo per second, 24/7, that would still take over a year, and one picture per minute would pretty much take the full 61 years in real time anyway.^note Coeur admits to not thinking about the math on the Professor Arc Forum, and after a user suggested explaining it with a video function (at 60 frames per second it works out to around 6 days of filming), he proceeded to incorporate that into a later chapter to smooth over his error.
• You Can Turn Back: After making it painfully clear that the assault on the Twilight City is little more than a suicide mission even if Arc Corp succeeds, Jaune gives Blake the option to opt out by telling her to empty her back account and run off to Menagerie, saying that as long as she doesn't come back to the main kingdoms and keeps quiet about anomalies, the rest of the organization won't notice or care about a missing employee in the midst of all the chaos. Blake spends the night mulling the option over, only to angrily realize that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if Jaune died and there was even a chance she could have saved him.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Blake has seen parts of the White Fang move in a direction she cannot support. But many faunus, especially in Menagerie where they're seen as a supportive community initiative, consider at least the bulk of the organization to be a positive force fighting against the establishment for justice and fair treatment. Annabelle, being a young child from a family that supports the Fang, sees them as amazing heroes who fight against evil, especially evil humans. When Jaune puts himself between her and her nightmare boogeymen, her reality-bending power morphs his outfit into a White Fang uniform because that's her perception of what 'the good guys' look like.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Part of the reason for Jaune's status as the family Black Sheep is that the family matriarch Juniper died defending him on a mission, with several of his sisters outright blaming him for her death. Even Juniper's first thought every time she's revived is that she probably would have lived and not succumbed to the Mountain Glenn anomaly if anyone else was with her that day.

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