Fanfic / My Huntsman Academia

This is the story about how you became the world's greatest Huntsman.^note All credit for the image goes to its original owners.

Izuku Midoriya wanted to be a Huntsman his whole life to bring hope to those in need, just like his idol, Toshinori Yagi. But Izuku was a "Moon Child", or "Broken" as more callous people would say. His soul was terribly weak and he had no way to project an Aura. Despite this, he didn't give up hope, enrolling in a combat school and trying his damnedest to achieve his dream, even if he knew that it was probably pointless.

Now seventeen years old, he's on his way to Beacon Academy, the finest Huntsman Academy in the world. Although his Aura needs work and his new Semblance, One For All, has some serious kickback, Izuku finally has a chance to turn a hopeless dream into reality. He's gotta put in some serious effort to make that happen and has a ton of important decisions to make, whether it's doing one-on-one training to get the hang of One For All, choosing whether to run from or fight the nastiest of Grimm, or just figuring out what to say to a girl he just met, this would-be Hero has a lot on his plate and big shoes to fill.

How is he going to handle all of this?

Well, you decide.

My Huntsman Academia is a My Hero Academia/RWBY Fusion Fic Forum Quest written by gorilla_fingers on Spacebattles. Taking place in the world of Remnant with My Hero Academia's Hero Course students becoming Huntsmen-in-Training, it follows Izuku's path to follow in his idol's footsteps as a hero in the making along with all of the choices that come with it.

It is also being edited into traditional fanfic format by Shovern and Wind-Waker and can be read on FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own. It isn't exactly the same; for one, mentions of the mechanics of the game (so common in the Quest proper) are removed. Sections are trimmed down, edited, and moved around to make it third-person instead of second-person, not to mention have a more consistent feel (one canon omake had its ending (which made it more comedic) removed so as to make it a touch more somber).

Beware of unmarked spoilers.

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My Huntsman Academia provides examples of:

A-B

• Academy of Adventure: Beacon Academy of course. The other Huntsmen Academies like Haven and Atlas also get passing mentions.
• Achievement System: During certain major battles (referred to as "dungeons" in standard tabletop format), clearing certain objectives will earn achievements that provide bonus Character Points (CP) to be invested into Izuku's stats and skills. These achievements can also improve Izuku's relationships with the people he fights alongside.
• Achilles' Heel: While a well-developed Aura will protect its users all over, it drains much faster if it's being forced to take hits that would otherwise be extremely lethal, such as a knife stabbing an area above a vital organ like the kidneys. Going for the squishy parts like the eyes and groin is another surefire way to deal damage.
• Action Girl: The vast majority of the female cast is this, punching, shooting, and slicing Grimm to bits.
• Adaptation Deviation: Aside from the fact that the world of RWBY is mixed with the world of My Hero Academia, the world is pretty much running on the schedule of the seasons of RWBY... with the exception of time. The first volume of the story (covering Initiation to the Docks) takes place in where the first semester of a school would be, timeline-wise, which means that the Docks take place in the winter. In canon RWBY, the first sign of changing seasons only came in season three, when Fall happened, and by the end of that season, snow had begun to fall.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • The members of RWBY and JNPR are placed in different teams due to the absence of Jaune and the presence of a few My Hero Academia characters, with Pyrrha, Nora, and Weiss being in a team with Izuku, Ruby, and Ren being in a team with Shoto and Bakugo, and Blake and Yang being in a team with Tenya and Tsuyu.
  • Ochako doesn’t interact much with characters from her original series and her role as Izuku's potential love interest has been supplanted by Yang.
  • A few members of Class 1-A, such as Momo, Mina, Kaminari, and Kirishima, do not attend Beacon and instead go to one of the other Hunter Schools.
• Adaptation Species Change:
  • Those with animal-like Mutant Quirks like Mina and Tsuyu are retooled as Faunus in this story.
  • It's implied that the Noumu are part Grimm. In the original, they were humans who had multiple quirks inserted into them by All For One, coupled with surgery.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Multiple characters get their issues looked at closer than in their home series, or get new ones due to the changed setting. Pyrrha's dislike of her fame is given serious time here, as is Blake's guilt over her actions as a terrorist (which is now much worse than in canon, giving her comparable self-worth to early series Izuku coupled with a nice big dose of self-loathing). Yang has dealt for years with the pressure of keeping her family together while dealing with feelings of abandonment at the hands of Raven (and later, the sense of betrayal that Qrow and Taiyang never alleviated these feelings, particularly the ones where she felt responsible for driving their team apart), and Weiss shows more signs of the strain her high-class life has given her. Shouto, while he isn't as angry as he was in early MHA, has his loneliness and lack of social skills given time in the sun, and unlike in MHA, Tsuyu actually faces racism due to her Adaptational Species Change. Nora wants to tell Ren how she feels, but she's paralyzed at the thought of losing the one person who's been a constant in her life for years.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • Izuku, because of how Aura interacts with attempts to build muscles. As Yang explains, when you work out and you have Aura, Aura grants you Super-Strength and so you're not lifting weights purely with your muscles anymore, you're lifting them with Aura. As such, it takes much more time and effort to build actual muscle tone when you're a Hunter, and because most people have their Aura unlocked when they're in their early teens (or even earlier), most Hunters and Huntresses tend towards leaner, more wiry builds. Izuku, on the other hand, didn't have this and went through ten months of Training from Hell without a shred of Aura to make the process easier. When he finally gets his Aura unlocked, he has six-pack abs and notable muscles, which draws the attention of a lot of girls. Compare this to the source work, where he was described as "plain-looking" and the majority of the guys in class are just as if not more muscular than him.
  • Kenji Tsuragame gets turned into a dog Faunus with floppy ears. Compare that to his original incarnation, where he was an otherwise normal human with a full dog's head.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • All of the My Hero Academia characters possess an Aura in this story (albeit Izuku didn't have one at first). As such, they receive all of its benefits, including a natural forcefield, Super-Strength to varying degrees, and accelerated healing. Izuku makes gratuitous use of the latter to pop his bones back into place after using one of his bone-shattering Smashes.
  • Toshinori gets to have the incredible fight against the Noumu again, although this time it's an Offscreen Moment of Awesome instead of the visual spectacle it was originally. This includes the finishing move where he punches the Nomu through the ceiling of the training facility. Except, instead of the USJ, which was a normal building (if a giant dome), he pulls the same stunt here... through a hundred feet of solid rock. The Noumu is later found on a nearby mountain. Weiss actually drops her formal persona and swears at the sight of the hole.
  • Tensei Iida in canon tried to fight Stain but lost in an implied Curb-Stomp Battle, being left with crippling injuries while Stain wasn't significantly injured at all. In this version, he still lost, but he exhausted and seriously wounded Stain, meaning that the fight was close enough to deplete both their Auras. He also has a transforming weapon — a jousting lance with a dust cannon — instead of just relying on jet-propelled martial arts.
• Adaptational Curves:
  • Izuku earned his six-pack abs like in canon, but he slowly gets brawnier as he continues training, to the point that he's practically bursting out of his old combat school uniform (fitted to his old Geek Physique) when he tries to wear it for a formal occasion. He's also the most frequent source of eye candy in the story.
  • Nora (as biased as she is), says that Izuku's muscular body is an 8.5/Ren, implying that Ren is quite muscular under his loose-fitting clothing.
  • Yang is about as slim as most of her peers in RWBY, but in this story, she's described as leanly muscular and Ruby says Izuku's biceps are "almost as big" as Yang's at the start of the story.
  • Both Ruby and Weiss take up weightlifting to overcome their Fragile Speedster tendencies and come out more muscular for it.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Cardin is even more of an asshole than he is in the original RWBY, lording himself over others as nobility, calling Yang a bimbo and a slut, and going out of his way to bully anyone smaller and weaker than him. He also holds a grudge against Izuku for exposing him as the one who tried to frame Katsuki for blowing up the bathrooms and gets CRDL to try to gang up on Izuku behind closed doors.
• Adaptational Job Change: Unlike in RWBY, Ironwood is not actually a General in this universe. He is only the Headmaster of Atlas Academy, holding just the one seat on Atlas's governing council for that role. His other role from canon, high command of Atlas's military, is split off into a new character, General Fyter.
• Adaptational Name Change: The League of Villains is called the Monochrome League.
• Adaptational Wimp
  • A change from canon RWBY is the relation of Aura and Semblances. In canon, having one's Aura unlocked grants superhuman physical abilities like strength, durability, and healing. Huntsman also locks a person's Semblance behind an unlocked Aura, when they are independent in canon (to the point of civilian children and even at least one fetus in utero activating their Semblance with a locked Aura). This also means that characters from My Hero Academia, where the majority of the population has a Quirk, don't have their canon powers unless they also have Aura.
  • Some of the more overpowered or reality-breaking Quirks from My Hero Academia are toned down to fit into the slightly more realistic tone of RWBY.
    • Mount Lady, for example, has a Semblance that makes her grow a few feet and become stronger, but not to the Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever extreme of her canon powerset.
    • Shoto Todoroki still has his fire and ice abilities, but he has to use Dust to trigger it, whereas his canon counterpart can do it without outside help.
    • The Iida family in canon tend to have super-speed powers via engines in their body parts. Here, they have unusual Auras that can't produce a Semblance, so they rely on power armor to compensate (the Quest Manager has said this was so that there wasn't a doubling up on the super-speed powers that Ruby has).
• Adapted Out:
  • Izuku has taken the place of Jaune Arc in this story and the latter is utterly absent. According to the author, it was because their character arcs were too similar, and so it was decided to cut out Jaune.
  • In the non-canon "Budding" AU (where Raven never left Taiyang), because of the source of the AU, Ruby doesn't exist as Taiyang never got together with Summer.
  • Thanks to changed circumstances, the trip to Forever Fall, which capped off the Jaundice arc in canon, doesn't happen. Instead, the teams are sent to Mountain Glenn for the USJ-equivalent.
  • The GM confirms that the Robot Fight from early season 2 didn't happen, and instead is replaced with the Worpeltinger Saga.
  • Multiple BNHA characters are confirmed as not showing up by the GM, such as Shinsou, Sero Hanta (the GM couldn't figure out how to make his power work in the new setting), and Rikkido Sato (there's already multiple people with Super Strength powers in the new combined setting, another one was considered redundant).
  • To a small degree, the Tenya Family gets hit by this- in order to keep Ruby relevant as the Speedster of the setting, Tenya's whole family doesn't have their canonical powers.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Izuku has "Deku", which started out as a form of Malicious Misnaming but became affectionate after Coco called it cute. Yang also calls him "Slugger" for their mutual reliance on Good Old Fisticuffs. Nora calls him "Fearless Leader" for his maddeningly reckless plans and Determinator attitude as the leader of Team MNVW.
  • Katsuki still gets called Kacchan by Izuku.
  • Tsuyu herself tells all of her friends to call her Tsu.
• Age Lift: Izuku and the rest of the transplanted first-year My Hero Academia students are aged up slightly to 17 to match the usual age of entry for Beacon Academy students. Similarly, the transplanted third-year students are aged up from 18 to 19.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Toshinori's superhero alter ego from his home series is mentioned as a series of "All Might" comics that Izuku collected when he was younger as well as his epithet as the "All Mighty Huntsman".
• Anachronic Order: The story's events aren't always played in chronological order, hopping from scene to scene to allow people to vote on what happens next in each individual scene or write in their own ideas for how the story should go. For example, early on Izuku is talking to Pyrrha, and made several time skips so that the voters could choose how Izuku would respond, but continued the conversation around those skipped segments. The choices would show up in the next update. This is removed in the Fanfiction.net version, which is edited to be more coherent.
• And Then What?: This trope is why Izuku considers Toshinori to be superior to Enji Todoroki, despite Enji having more successful missions under his belt. Enji will go out, do the mission, then report back and go for the next mission. Toshinori will stay with the settlement or people he helped and give them aid in terms of morale, helping them rebuild, or even trying to solve the underlying issue that led to the situation in the first place. Izuku notes that thanks to the Grimm's emotion-sensing abilities and how Toshinori's method makes people hopeful, Grimm attacks in the regions that Toshinori helps will sharply decrease.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Occasionally, the characters will have to face larger-than-normal foes.
  • Initiation has Izuku, Tenya, Blake, and Pyrrha face off against the Giant Nevermore.
  • Team MNVW ends up fighting an adult Ursa Major on a trip to the Emerald Forest, which is about 30 feet tall.
• Audience Participation: The story's format actively encourages readers to vote-in on what Izuku is going to do next, whether it's training, developing his relationships with others, or his strategy in combat.
• Badass Adorable: Many of the students are just as adorable as they are badass, including Izuku, Ruby, and Tsuyu.
• Badass Teacher: The entire faculty at Beacon, between Toshinori, Ozpin, Glynda, etc., can be considered this. Taiyang, despite his retired status, also counts as he teaches at Signal, as can Qrow.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: Just like in the main RWBY canon, Ozpin runs this to protect humanity from the Grimm and other evil forces that are on the horizon. Toshinori is in on this as well, as is Izuku due to being Toshinori's successor. That said, Izuku is very new to the conspiracy, and both Ozpin and Toshinori are averse to telling him more than he needs to know, so he'll be able to live life a little easier... for a little bit, at least.
  • Known members of the conspiracy thus far include Ozpin, Glynda, Toshinori, and Qrow. It's hinted that Sorahiko (Gran Torino) is in on it as well, and Raven and Summer were former members.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Grimm are described as having homogeneous body structures, so their mass is evenly distributed throughout and they have no organs aside from bones. Because of this, weapons that use ammunition like buckshot are less effective against them unless used at point-blank range.
• Boring, but Practical: Mei Hatsume claims that tech and weapons made in Mountain Glenn tend to be this- in her words, "designed more for efficiency rather than any spark or showmanship."
• Bullying the Dragon:
  • Cardin Winchester and his team try to pick on Velvet, someone who's not very confident and has failed a grade before, not to mention is a Faunus. Then he tries to pull Katsuki in, and when he refuses, tries to get violent with Katsuki. The resulting event is only shown by Bakugou walking away with a few bruises and saying "he handled it." He then aims for Tsu and meets an angry Yang as a result. After this, Cardin turns his sights on Izuku, who proceeds to beat Cardin down without taking a single solid hit during their spar after scaring the rest of Team CRDL off with One For All: Full Cowl.
  • Junior, owner of the Club from the Yellow trailer, hires Pyrrha Nikos, an internationally famous four-time tournament winner, as a waitress. He then decides to grope her. We don't see what happens next, but when everything is said and done, his club is in flames, he's temporarily paralyzed, and the cops are involved.
• Butt-Monkey: Izuku gets into tons of embarrassing situations, like running out of the shower with nothing but a Modesty Towel on when he thought the girls were in trouble, giving them an eyeful of his six-pack abs to his embarrassment. Weiss isn't much better, being the target of numerous Accidental Pervert moments on Izuku's part and generally being placed into situations where she's comically out of depth.

C-D

• Cast Herd: The characters in the story are quickly divided into teams and factions, such as the core three first-year teams, Team MNVW, Team RSBR, and Team TABY.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Izuku has an entire collection of "All Might" comics that are based on Toshinori's exploits. The cartoon series based on it, "The Adventures of the All Mighty Huntsman", has an impersonator named Chris Sabat doing All Might's voice.
  • Izuku, at one point, sings the song "Peace Sign," which is the second opening of My Hero Academia. Yang chooses to sing "Gold," which is her theme in RWBY, then she and Izuku sing "I Burn," another song of hers.
• Colourful Theme Naming: The vast majority of characters in the story are named after a color or something associated with a color after the Great War which nearly wiped out artistic expression. If it isn't in their given names, their surnames will provide a color reference. Funnily enough, this tradition is part of RWBY lore, but Izuku coincidentally fits the theme (his family name has the kanji for "Green").
  • Averted by much of the transplanted My Hero Academia cast, as while Monty Oum made it a requirement that characters in RWBY have colors in their name, MHA had no such obligation. Thus you get characters like Toshinori Yagi, who despite existing in Remnant, don't have colors in their names.
• Combat Stilettos: Pyrrha, Weiss, and Blake all wear them. Izuku actually questions the practicality of this. Pyrrha admits that it's mainly for aesthetics and that she's just used to fighting in them, while Weiss just doesn't want to seem quite as short as she actually is. But Blake's have a purpose - her heels were hollowed out to hold a storage compartment and a lockpick, which allowed her to sneak things around in places where guards wouldn't check.
• Combination Attack: Izuku formulates these for his team members from time to time in order to expand their options in a fight. He has currently developed two of these:
  • Izuku has one with Pyrrha called "Autumn Bell". It consists of Pyrrha and Izuku charging at the same target from opposite sides. While Pyrrha Shield Bashes a target in the head with her shield and knocks them towards Izuku, who proceeds to punch the target back into Pyrrha's shield with a Beacon Smash. The attacks reverberate off each other, dealing serious damage and leaving the target dazed and wide open.
  • Nora has one with Weiss called "Flash Freeze". It consists of Weiss charging Nora's grenades with Ice Dust. The grenades are then launched at the target(s), exploding in a storm of ice and lightning that deals serious damage and leaves anything that survived rooted in place by a layer of ice and brittle enough to shatter with a simple punch.
• Contrived Coincidence: Tsuyu and Izuku lampshade that their first-year class is incredibly well-connected. Somehow, across the three main teams, they have a member of the prestigious Iida family (Tenya), Heiress to the SDC (Weiss), one of the best Championship Duelsts in the world (Pyrrha), the daughters of one of the best Hunter Teams around (Ruby and Yang), son of the #2 hero (Shouto Todoroki), the valedictorian of the year at Birch (Katsuki), and though it's a secret, the future Symbol of Peace (Izuku), and the daughter of the rulers of Menagerie (Blake). The only ones who don't have something special like that are Ren, Nora, and Tsuyu.
• Cool Airship: Bullhead shuttles are used to bus people around like the one Beacon students used on their trips to Vale.
• Crappy Holidays: New Years has never been a particularly festive time for Izuku. He usually spent it nursing the injuries he got at combat school while trying to overcome his status as a Moon Child and never had friends to celebrate it with prior to coming to Beacon. As a result, the day used to just pass him by uneventfully aside from watching the countdown on TV with his mother. Yang is appalled by this and immediately ropes him and their friends into a friendly game of bowling to give him something to do.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The Huntsman Academies and combat schools are all designed to train the next generation of Hunters to battle the Grimm.
• Darker and Edgier: To an extent. The author has stated that he wants to give the series the same tone throughout, taking some of the darker atmosphere from Volumes 3-5 of RWBY and the later chapters of My Hero Academia for consistency's sake. Because of this, the Huntsmen and Huntresses have actually gotten hurt and bleed (Izuku especially), the characters' personal issues are touched on earlier, cussing and sexual innuendo are used much more liberally, and the characters actually drink alcohol rather than drinking non-alcoholic substitutes.
• Dawn of an Era:
  • Toshinori's defense of Mountain Glenn marked an end to the old age of Huntsmen and started a new one where they were considered more along the lines of how Heroes are in MHA, rather than as Grimm Exterminators, so there are lots more Huntsmen around now. Further, it also kicked off a wave of expansion and colonization across the kingdoms. The current age of history is actually called "The Age of Toshinori."
  • Izuku even mentions that Professor Port has lived through two of these - the more recent aforementioned "Toshinori's Era" (which began when Toshinori saved Mountain Glenn) and the "Pre-Mecha Weapon Era," which ended once Mecha-Shift weapons were invented.
• Day in the Limelight: During Izuku's downtime sessions, whoever he ends up hanging out with gets to share the spotlight with him for a number of scenes, like Blake when they're reading together or Yang when they're out for a night in Vale.
  • Many omakes (canon and not) will focus on one (or more) of the non-Izuku characters for a change.
• Demoted to Extra: Because both RWBY and My Hero Academia have many characters, some will inevitably get reduced presences.
  • Principal Nezu, the one in charge of U.A. in MHA, was the headmaster of Beacon before Ozpin and isn't mentioned much. In MHA, he was still an extra, but one that played an important role in the running of the school.
  • Uraraka, in MHA, was one of Izuku's first friends and a semi-main character in her own right. She barely gets mentioned.
  • Downplayed in Katsuki's case. In his home series, his relationship as The Rival to Izuku is critical to both of their character arcs and they butt heads repeatedly throughout the series. But due to the greatly expanded cast, this gets far less focus in My Huntsman Academia.
  • Downplayed with Ruby herself. While she's not forced out of the story or anything, in canon she's the protagonist. Here, Izuku is. She gets correspondingly less time.
• Detonation Moon: The moon was partially shattered by an unknown force in the ancient past.
• Doomed Hometown:
  • Averted for Izuku and Bakugou, whose hometown of Mountain Glenn was Spared by the Adaptation thanks to Toshinori's intervention.
  • Played straight with Nora and Ren's hometown.
• Door Stopper: The main story has over 1.8 million words of content^note which includes technical information like stat screens and progress options as of June 2021. Then there's the 460,000 words worth of canon Omakes and 360,000 words worth of non-canon Omakes.
• Dope Slap: Tsuyu is always ready to hand these out if someone makes a pun. Even if it's not Yang doing it, as Izuku found out to his dismay. Even if she's not around to hear it.
• The Dreaded: Blake personally confirms that when she was still with the White Fang, Toshinori was on the "if you see him, RUN" list.
  • The leaders of the White Fang have standing orders to not attack inside downtown Vale, again due to Toshinori. When Blake finds out that there are large numbers of White Fang operatives moving into the downtown area, she immediately suspects that there's a rogue faction in place.
  • Neo openly dismisses the idea of attacking the Docks (which she and Roman did in canon) because it would draw way too much attention to themselves... and again, Toshinori is name-dropped.
  • In a non-Toshinori example, Blake points out that she really hopes that Adam does not take the field at any point, as he tends to result in massive civilian casualties.
• Dysfunction Junction: Most of the members of Team MNVW, Team RSBR, and Team TABY have tragic pasts and quirks that cause them to butt heads from time to time.

E-F

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • When Sun is talking about other stowaways that he met on the ship to Vale, he mentions a person who refused to take off his mask and presented himself as a magician, and a person with huge lips who felt "Off." These two then vanished without a trace about a day out from Vale. The descriptions of these people match that of the League of Villains members Compress and Magne, and their disappearance is likely due to Kurogiri's portal semblance.
  • Earlier in the scene, he mentions that "one team [he] had never heard of" was sent to Vale early from Mistral, and that's it. It's likely he was talking about Cinder Fall's team, which was sent from Mistral. He also mentions "Fumikage's Team," referencing a team led by Tokoyami Fumikage from canon 1-A.
  • Because of the way scenes are set up, allowing the players to direct Izuku's actions to different people, sometimes potential character interactions show up well before Izuku actually does. Early on, after Ozpin's speech the first night at Beacon, the author said that among the conversation options were several characters who would eventually show up properly later, including a green-haired girl on a scroll call (Tsuyu), a blue-haired boy stretching (Tenya), a boy with multi-colored hair who glared at Izuku when he tried to approach (Shoto), a red-haired girl talking to a dark-haired boy (Nora and Ren), a white-haired girl looking for her bags (Weiss), and a red-haired girl trying to not be noticed by the wall (Pyrrha). The players chose to speak with only Weiss and Pyrrha, though over the next few chapters, all of them would be introduced to Izuku.
• Enemy Mine: Izuku and Katsuki end up using Neo as their source of intel on the White Fang's operations.
• Enhanced Archaic Weapon: The majority of the cast use medieval-style weapons that are upgraded and outfitted for the modern era like Ruby's Crescent Rose, a scythe with a massive built-in sniper rifle. Notable exceptions are Ren, who just uses a pair of machine pistols with bayonets, Shoto and Kaminari, who mainly rely on their Semblances and carry a pistol as a Ranged Emergency Weapon, and Eijirou, who throws metal balls as projectiles.
• Establishing Character Moment: In-Universe, Ozpin has students submit an essay when applying to Beacon, as this shows what kind of person is applying. Izuku's is so long and so detailed that not only does Ozpin say it counts as an academic thesis, he also tells Izuku that he'll be instituting a word limit on future essays.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Monochrome League are this, to the surprise of many when they first show up- they have humans and faunus working alongside one another with no difficulty. Before that, the most common forms of bad guys (that weren't Grimm) tended to divide themselves on species lines, like organized crime syndicates with mostly human members or the White Fang, a Faunus Terrorist Group.
• Expy:
  • When one or more members of Team MNVW needs to be pitted against another team in a spar, they'll often end up against characters who are blatantly lifted from other works, such as Caitlyn and Vi from League of Legends, Lloyd, Presea, Genis, and Zelos from Tales of Symphonia, the Lady of Pain (named Dolore Sigillo here) from Dungeons & Dragons, Sans and Papyrus from Undertale, or Cloud, Barret, Tifa, and Aerith from Final Fantasy VII.
  • Owari Meisai, Mitsu Bachi, and Gekido Abareru, three of Izuku's sparring opponents, are clear references to, respectively, The End, The Pain, and The Fury from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
• Evil vs. Evil: Downplayed. The Monochrome League (the local equivalent of the League of Villains) and Cinder Fall both are antagonists to the heroes and have their own plans, but they do not get along. There hasn't been any outright conflict yet, but it's telling that Cinder's operations are largely on the back burner so as not to draw All For One's attention, given who she works for.
• Exact Words: One omake has Yang shocked at what Tsuyu and Sun get up to when she gets a text with the description "Here's me holding my banana!" She, understandably, thought that it was something a little more raunchy, but it's literally a selfie Sun took of him holding a banana.
• Exotic Weapon Supremacy:
  • As per the original RWBY, almost everyone uses some kind of exotic, over-the-top Swiss-Army Weapon. Izuku's Emerald Gust is a comparatively simple pump shotgun inside of a Power Fist, but even then it gets upgraded with a shield, clip-fed reloading mechanisms, and Trick Bullets.
  • This is mostly averted for people who tend to use their Semblance to fight instead of weapons - they tend to pick up a Hand Cannon as a Ranged Emergency Weapon. Examples of such include Shoto, Kaminari, and Mina. Eijirou throws iron balls instead.
  • Tsuyu is initially a subversion, as she has one of the most normal weapons of the series, with her just using a machete with a handle that's grooved so that she can wield it with her tongue. This lasts until the aftermath of the docks, where she gets another one that turns into a shotgun, playing the trope straight.
• Extranormal Institute: Beacon Academy is the most prestigious of the four Huntsmen Academies. Students are admitted by being flung into a forest full of bloodthirsty monsters with orders to eliminate everything in their way after retrieving an artifact. Should they pass, they then have to handle Port's inundating speeches and monster-filled live exercises, survive sparring with lethal weaponry, and listen in on lightning-quick history lectures. Then there's the criminals seeking to undermine the world's peace and stability.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: Even when almost everyone has special powers and Impossibly Cool Weapons to deal with hordes of monsters intent on wiping out humanity, people still have to deal with ordinary problems like burglaries, high school, and navigating their social lives.
• Everyone Is a Super:
  • Virtually everyone has the chance to awaken their Aura and Semblance, giving them unique powers and superhuman strength, speed, and durability. Everyone except the Moon Children, who are often the target of mockery and bullying for their condition and were outright enslaved in the ancient past.
  • This is also subverted in the author's notes. To keep the peace, it's forbidden for people to get their Aura awakened unless they plan on going into an action-based career like becoming a Huntsman. Even still, most Mooks at least have theirs unlocked. It's also forbidden to publicly use one's Semblance in Atlas and frowned upon when others use it to enrich themselves, which makes carnies leery of Hunters who try to use their Semblances for an easy win.
    • That said, some people still do it even if it is illegal, even if it isn't for the purposes of combat- Tsu confirms that almost everyone in her family has theirs unlocked, as it helps to deal with damage from spine problems that run in the family.
• Faint in Shock:
  • Inko Midoriya passes out after learning that her son Izuku is the leader of a team with three other gorgeous women his age because she's terrified of becoming a grandmother too soon. When she finally meets them in person, she passes out again when Nora's vague wording brings Inko to the conclusion that Izuku is in a polygamous relationship with every member of Team MNVW.
  • Izuku himself has been on the verge of passing out from sheer embarrassment on several occasions.
    • When he and Yang start dating, his legs buckle out from underneath him when he realizes that he's clenching her hand.
    • Izuku proceeds to have a brief mental shutdown when Tenya starts accusing him of being a serial philanderer after Nora reveals to Team TABY that he has an entire box of condoms. ^note His mother sent them not long after he officially began attending Beacon.
    • He passes out while standing up when Nora convinces Team MADE that he's some kind of Sex God when she tells them that he "finger-banged" (used Glenn Smash against) Yang ten times in the middle of sparring class. His team has to drag him back to their dorm room by the scruff of his hoodie.
  • Shoto has to undress Weiss to get her cold, wet clothes off of her when she is caught in a frigid blizzard and passes out. When Weiss learns this, the idea that he saw her naked leaves her so embarrassed that she faints on the spot.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Leading Huntsmen like Toshinori and Enji Todoroki are famous worldwide. Team STRQ is also said to have reached similar levels of fame, but they fell apart and have been relatively obscure since.
  • Pyrrha is also a celebrity worldwide for her flawless winning streak as a tournament fighter, leading to her epithet: "The Invincible Girl". It makes her The Dreaded in combat classes.
    • In a more comedic sense, pretty much every restaurant in Vale has blacklisted Pyrrha from working with them after she temporarily paralyzed Junior and burned down his club when he groped her. This means it's very hard for her to find a job (or at least, one that doesn't capitalize on her fame).
  • Weiss is primarily famous for being the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, the largest and most influential corporation on Remnant, though there are those who have heard of her singing career. Team MADE, a first-year team of Huntsmen, also know about her through her sister, Winter.
    • Both Weiss and Pyrrha are surprised that Izuku hadn't heard of them, and given Izuku, it is somewhat odd, but he has his reasons - he didn't know Pyrrha because he focused his obsession on Hunters and Huntresses, not the tournament circuit, and Weiss because though he knew about the SDC, he didn't know a lot about the family and thought it was someone with a similar last name.
    • Weiss actually proves how bad it is that her name is famous- when she is attacked, Faunus will try to single her out for what her family has done (both the Monochrome League and the White Fang are guilty of this), and Tsu and Blake show her suspicion.
  • Izuku starts building a reputation for himself through his various deeds. At Beacon, he becomes popular among the faculty and students for heading the investigation to solve the mystery of the exploding bathrooms and for standing up to Cardin. In Vale, he and the rest of Team MNVW end up putting Junior's criminal operations out of business. In his hometown of Mountain Glenn, he becomes well-reported as one of the Beacon Huntsmen who helped clear out the tunnels of Grimm and terrorists when the Monochrome League attacked.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • This is even more prevalent than in the original RWBY, as characters like Tsuyu Asui who have Mutation Quirks in their home series are retooled into Faunus in this story. On the tamer end of the spectrum, Faunus get bullying and derision from their peers. On the worst end, they're enslaved and callously murdered solely for being Faunus. This racism goes both ways, as many radicalized Faunus are supremacists who would like nothing more than to do the same to Humans.
  • Tsuyu points out that while the White Fang may have pushed along advancements in terms of laws that protect Faunus, in reality, their deeds do more harm than good as they drive normal people to fear and hate Faunus. It's a bit of an Armor-Piercing Response for Blake since Tsuyu is a Faunus (and thus, allows Blake to see that despite her efforts in the White Fang, her actions didn't just hurt humans, but the people she was trying to protect).
  • Chimeras are an interesting case among the Faunus. They're the result of different types of Faunus interbreeding and thus having combinations of traits that might not appear in nature (such as Mina's wide variety of traits), or of random genetic accidents that make a faunus with multiple traits from the same creature (like Velvet's sister, who has both rabbit ears and legs). While some of these mutations might be totally benign, others can prove actively harmful. There's a bit of a debate between groups of Faunus about them, as some Faunus use them as proof that one should stick to your own type of Faunus when looking for mates, as it's safer for the children. The White Fang, however, says that Chimeras are still Faunus and need to be protected. Tsu, though, points out that this is mainly so that the Fang can crack down harder on Faunus who might decide to take a human as a mate (as any children of a human-Faunus pairing will be Faunus, with no risk of a Chimera being born).
  • Kirishima is actually exposed to this, as thanks to his naturally sharp teeth, people think he's a Faunus and treat him accordingly. He's not - he's fully human and the reason for his teeth is as of yet unexplained. But he did use this to his advantage to get the drop on a group of White Fang goons who thought him trustworthy because of his "race."
  • Weiss actually gets this turned down from her initial canon self- she feels a little uncomfortable about the Faunus, but she adjusts quickly and sees that her company has done wrong in the past to the race.
• Fictional Disability: Being born Broken is considered a disability, as Aura supports physical growth. As a result, Broken people tend to be shorter and less physically fit than those with Aura (though this isn't necessarily the case- Toshinori Yagi was Broken, yet he was incredibly physically fit and tall, even before getting One For All). Due to being Broken for most of his life, Izuku is only about as tall as Ruby at the start of the story. Since getting Aura, though, he's grown taller than Weiss by the time Solstice rolls around.
  • Being a Chimera can be this. While there are fortunate Chimeras, like Mina, there are ones who have severe problems with their animal attributes giving them problems. Thena, Velvet's sister, has the lower half of a rabbit and needs special clothing and shoes just to go out in public. It's also implied that there are medical complications for some Chimeras, again due to their attributes.
• Fictional Holiday:
  • Color Week is a week-long series of holidays in the fall similar to Golden Week, a Japanese series of holidays held in the spring that break up work schedules and offer both students and workers a chance to relax. Izuku uses the holiday to hang out with his friends and to visit home during his all-time favorite holiday, Hunter's Day, which is a local celebration of Huntsmen and Huntresses held only in Mountain Glenn due to how grateful the city is to Toshinori for saving it.
  • There's also the Long Night, the story's equivalent of Halloween. Much like Halloween, kids dress up in costumes in hopes of getting candy from their neighbors, while the adults often attend costume parties and get wasted with their friends.
  • The Solstice is the setting's equivalent of Christmas, taking place in the winter, being known for the exchange of gifts, and even has real-world Christmas Specials associated with it (Izuku and Inko are seen watching a Remnant version of "Year Without A Santa Claus.")
• First-Name Basis:
  • Greeting and social conventions follow the western-style of RWBY, so Izuku gets referred to by his first name a lot more than in his home series, as do Tenya, Tsuyu, Shoto, and Katsuki. Only their teachers, Tenya, and Weiss refer to them by their surnames, reflecting their more distant and professional relationship. Weiss quickly loosens up enough to refer to Izuku and the others by their given names while Tenya remains uptight until he's reminded that he doesn't have to be so formal.
  • Inverted with Denki Kaminari of Team MADE. He prefers to be known by his last name, as he thinks it sounds better.
• Flanderization: The story tends to exaggerate certain traits of characters that stuck with the fandom.
  • Izuku only said "Holy woah!" a handful of times in the English dub of his home series. Here it's his catchphrase akin to "Zoinks!" or "Jinkies!" when he's surprised.
  • Nora's comment about breaking Cardin's legs in the original RWBY has been turned into a sort of Battle Cry for Nora and emphasizes her Cute and Psycho credentials, fantasizing about breaking the legs of Grimm and even threatening to break Izuku's legs during their spars. She succeeds in one sidestory. Her love of pancakes has also been flanderized into a hatred of waffles, which she has no problem with in RWBY Chibi.
  • Yang is an incessant Pungeon Master whose constant punning earns groans from everyone around her and Dope Slaps from Tsuyu. Only Izuku manages to find some of them funny enough to laugh along. In the original RWBY, Yang only punned a handful of times.
• Foil: Many of the characters are foils to each other in a variety of ways, even among people on their own teams.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • The teams are very different from the original RWBY story. Izuku is the leader of Team Mandevilla (MNVW) with Pyrrha, Nora, and Weiss. Ruby is the leader of Team Raspberry (RSBR) consisting of Shoto, Katsuki, and Ren. Tenya Iida is the leader of Team Tabby (TABY) consisting of Tsuyu, Blake, and Yang. The players were allowed to choose Izuku's partner (Pyrrha), and gorilla_fingers rolled dice for the others.
  • Mountain Glenn is nothing more than abandoned ruins in the main RWBY canon, but Toshinori's intervention has allowed it to become a small, protected city that's as heavily guarded if not more so than Vale. It's also Izuku's and Katsuki's hometown, having become known as the "City of Hope" for Toshinori's heroics with a statue dedicated to him as thanks.
    • This also means that the White Fang can't use it as a base. So they try to pull a night invasion of Vale through the docks to steal huge amounts of Dust that gets intercepted by Team MNVW, Team RSBR, Team TABY, Team MADE, and Sun Wukong.
  • Thanks to Ruby and Yang being distracted by Izuku, Ruby never runs into Weiss and causes an explosion. This leads to Weiss later discovering that one of her Dust canisters was leaking, which could have caused an explosion (as it did in the main timeline).
  • Because of Toshinori's victory at Mountain Glenn, it ushers in a new age for Huntsmen, and a rethinking of their role in society. This changes it from "just a job with grim responsibilities" to something closer to MHA's Pro Heroes. There's a sense of optimism about the job and there's far more Hunters and Hunter recruits out there now.
    • It's also subtly implied that because Toshinori brought a new era of hope and optimism to Remnant, the birth rate is much higher than it was in canon. This leads to new students and expanded class sizes at Huntsmen Academies, explaining the addition of BNHA students in the canon classes.
  • During the attack on the Underground Training Facility, Izuku immediately sends out a distress signal as soon as he and the others are confronted by the Monochrome League. This allows Toshinori to arrive to save them much earlier than he did to save Class 1-A in his home series, keeping him from having to push his limits and saving Aizawa from being grievously wounded by Nomu.
  • Tenya has Team TABY cooped up in their dorm while studying for their final exams. Because of this, Blake isn't at Vale's docks that day to meet Sun, and his role as Blake's confidant is passed to Izuku. Things get even more complicated for Sun when Team MNVW and Team RSBR happen to see him while he's already being chased by Team MADE, meaning that twelve Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-Training (including Ruby, Weiss, and Pyrrha) are running after him.
    Sun: Oh wow, this just isn't my day is it?
  • In addition, thanks to her not being on a team with Weiss, not meeting Sun, and a bunch of luck, Blake's status as a Faunus and former member of the White Fang remains known only to her and Izuku until the end of the Fire in Vale.
  • Because of the abundance of Pro Hunters (and Toshinori), the ones who attack the Docks are just the White Fang, not Roman and Neo- they claim it's suicide to try to do big operations like that under the nose of the massively buffed Hunter forces.
  • Weiss seeks out a teacher upon finding out that she wasn't made leader of the team. However, in canon, this was because she found Ruby's command style to be utterly lacking and completely disorganized. In addition, it's revealed that she was, in part, looking for a reason to hate Ruby from the start since she wasn't picked, and the thing about looking for reasons to dislike someone is, you usually find enough to justify yourself. In the quest, she still seeks out a teacher... but unlike with Ruby, this time she was impressed with Izuku. When there were embarrassing moments, he wasn't the one to deliberately instigate them. He tried to understand his team and attempted to make both himself and them better. He volunteers information freely for class. All in all, not a perfect leader, but Weiss realizes that he is doing a good job... which is a problem for her. In the end, her conversation with Toshinori is not about how she should be the leader, but that she recognizes that Izuku is a fine leader, but she feels awful that she still thinks she's owed the position. In short, in canon, she went to a teacher and got taught a lesson about how she was acting entitled and needed to give others a chance. In the quest, she realized the lesson already and needed help getting over what she felt her attitude said about her.
• Free-Range Children: Izuku and Katsuki used to go for romps in the woods around Mountain Glenn when they were kids even though there were Grimm prowling in the area.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Averted. While the cocktails Yang drinks at Junior's bar are said to be non-alcoholic in the original series, the drinks she and the others toss back include alcohol and the drinking age in Vale is said to be 16.
• Fun with Acronyms: The teams' names are ably derived from the first letter in each of the members' first or last names.
  • Team MNVW (pronounced "Mandevilla") consists of Izuku Midoriya, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie, and Weiss Schnee.
  • Team RSBR (pronounced "Raspberry") consists of Ruby Rose, Shouto Todoroki, Katsuki Bakugou, and Lie Ren.
  • Team TABY (pronounced "Tabby") consists of Tenya Iida, Tsuyu Asui, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long.
  • Team CFVY (pronounced "Coffee") consists of Coco Adel, Fox Alistair, Velvet Scarlatina, and Yatsuhashi Daichi.
  • Team MHA (pronounced "Mathiola") consists of Mirio Togata, Nejire Hadou, and Tamaki Amajiki. For added fun, it's also the acronym for My Hero Academia.
  • Team MADE consists of Momo Yaoyorozu, Mina Ashido, Denki Kaminari, and Eijirou Kirishima.
  • Team JAHM (pronounced "Jam") consists of Kyoka Jiro, Yuga Aoyama, Toru Hagakure, and Minoru Mineta
  • Team TKSM (pronounced "Tsukuyomi") consists of Fumikage Tokoyami, Kojo Koda, Mezo Shoji, and Mashirao Ojiro
  • Team STRQ (pronounced "Stark") consisted of Summer Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long, Raven Branwen, and Qrow Branwen.
  • Team ENGT (pronounced "Ignite") consisted of Enji Todoroki, Naomasa Tsukauchi, Glynda Goodwitch, and Toshinori Yagi.
• Fusion Fic: The story takes place in RWBY's setting with My Hero Academia's Heroes-in-Training and Pro Heroes being worked in as Huntsmen-in-Training and professional Huntsmen.
  • The White Fang base under the remains of Mountain Glenn is combined with the USJ attack scene.
  • Quirks are retooled into being Semblances (with some needing a little bit of reworking, such as Shoto needing to use Dust to get the same effects he does in canon), and in turn Semblances (and Aura mechanics) are retooled a little to fit in some of the oddities of Quirks (like their ability to be passed down in family lines, a feat restricted to the Schnee Glyphs in RWBY, or the concept of training your powers like a muscle, which is impractical in RWBY but a core part of MHA). People also have a habit of naming their Semblances in the story the way Quirks are when most of them go unnamed in RWBY.
  • People with animal or non-human traits in MHA become Faunus. In some cases, such as the dog-headed chief of police, these traits are even toned down to fit into the setting more.
  • While heroes like Endeavour or All Might still exist, they become Hunters with no hero names and are simply known as their normal names of Enji and Toshinori. That said, they may have titles bestowed upon them that may reflect their original hero names. Toshinori, for example, is referred to as the "All Mighty Huntsman," and Enji is called "the Endeavouring Huntsman."
  • Nezu is not the current headmaster (as seen in MHA), but he was the one before Ozpin took charge. It's hinted that Nezu was also one of Ozma's hosts.
  • U.A. becomes fused with Beacon as the main school setting, with multiple teachers from U.A. showing up as Izuku's professors (All Might, Midnight, and Eraserhead among them).
  • Because Remnant is not Earth and doesn't have the same countries or continents, places related to Toshinori and Izuku's attacks are named after places in Remnant instead of American States. For example, the list that Toshinori put together for Izuku to follow to acclimate his body to One For All was known as the "American Dream Plan," in MHA, but here it's the "Valean Dream Plan" after Vale. Attacks by the two are also named after places in Remnant, such as 'Patch Smash' or 'Glenn Smash.'
  • The Initiation arc is pretty much RWBY standard, but the Giant Nevermore of canon also takes the role of the Zero Point robot from early MHA (being the victim of Izuku's first use of One For All).
  • The video that young Izuku watched of All Might's debut in canon still exists, except instead of saving people from a normal disaster, it's him showing up to save Mountain Glenn from Grimm. Other than that, it's a shot-for-shot remake.

G-J

• Gamebooks: The story is written like a game of GURPS, allowing readers to choose how the story is going to go, whether it's Izuku's choices in the midst of a fight or how he's spending his downtime.
• Gilligan Cut: When Izuku tries to convince Weiss to let Nora in on their investigation of the Dust used in the Mt. Glenn attack.
  Weiss: Izuku... no. No no no no no. You can try to pull sympathy here all you want but I'm not going to risk this getting out just because of sentimentality! There's no way, absolutely no way, that you're going to 'guilt me' into bringing Nora along!"
  (Later)
  Nora: Gosh, Weiss, you shouldn't have been so nervous about asking us for help! Of course we'd be willing to give you a helping hand! We're a Team after all! Now, let's go break this guy's legs!"
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The reason why Ozpin won't tell Izuku about the threat that his conspiracy fights against is because the last time he told a group, it basically shattered Team STRQ. Summer went on more and more missions to try to save the world from the evil it faced until it led to her death. Qrow became an alcoholic. And it's implied that the stress of knowing what they were told led Raven to flee from her family and head back to Mistral, contributing to Taiyang's breakdown.
• Golden Super Mode: Yang and Izuku both have this. When Izuku activates Full Cowl mode, his skin glows bright gold. Yang's hair also does this when her Semblance is activated.
• Gone Horribly Right: Yang, in the tunnels, jokes that she needs to rest to recover, so 'if only there was a strong hunter with great abs that could carry me.' She starts blushing hard when Izuku believes that that's a good idea and crouches down so he can give her a piggyback ride. It even works- she gets back multiple points of HP thanks to her resting from the ride.
• Hand Cannon: Shoto carries a .44 caliber automatic pistol for when he overuses his Semblance. A member of the White Fang that Yang and Izuku fight carries a pair of revolvers with mid-high grade Fire Dust ammo that easily blast through concrete. Nieto Monoma also carries one of these.
• The Hero Dies: While Izuku has a certain degree of Plot Armor, the author points out that the possibility of him dying is very real if the readers make poor decisions, as shown by the ominous potential "achievements" at the end of certain battles.
• Heroes "R" Us: Famous Huntsmen often have their own merchandise. Toshinori is the most blatant one, with posters, stationery, dice, toys, bedsheets, clothes, and even a cartoon TV show. Izuku and Katsuki both owned at least one set of Toshinori-styled onesies as toddlers that they loved to wear. Nowadays, they desperately hide any pictures of themselves wearing them.
• Hideous Hangover Cure: Subverted. Tenya explicitly outlines that eating before drinking, drinking at a steady and controlled pace, and drinking plenty of water are necessary to avoid getting a hangover. Ren ends up pouring everyone tea to soothe their headaches the following day, as everyone sans Ren, Tenya, and Nora (who was explicitly told by Ren not to drink) ends up hungover after the Long Night party (albeit, Izuku didn't have it nearly as bad as the others due to taking it slow).
• I Call It "Vera": As per RWBY tradition, all personal weapons have their own names. Izuku's, for example, gets the name "Emerald Gust," while Katsuki's gauntlets become "Lord Explosion Murder," and "King Explosion Murder."
• Innocent Innuendo: Yang promises to help Izuku relax his sore muscles by doing something that's "pretty fun" with him, prompting a Gilligan Cut to the following exchange. They're playing a video game.
  Izuku: O-OH GODS, WAIT YANG, STOP, I'M NOT READY YET!
  Yang: Well you shouldn't have gotten back up if you weren't ready to go again Slugger, now come on! It's time for me to make this three in a row!
  Izuku: Yang, please, have mercy! I'm still so new to this, you can't possibly just bat me around like this!
  Yang: I can and I will Slugger, and now you're just gonna sit... back... and... TAKE IT! WOO!
• Innocently Insensitive
  • Weiss and Shoto tried to get to know each other at one point. Unfortunately, Shoto is absolutely terrible at talking to people or understanding social motivations. He asks her why "A spoiled princess," is studying so far away from her family. What he meant was that he knew she was different from what the hype around her said (that she was a spoiled princess, and meant it sarcastically) and was genuinely curious about her motivations, as she appeared to be defying her father in a way he could his. What Weiss got out of it was that he was calling her spoiled and that she didn't care about her family at all. In return, she manages to step on his Berserk Button by calling him a child of two elements, bringing up his... well, massive issues with his father. The two make up in the aftermath of the Mountain Glenn training battle.
  • Izuku gushes about another student's combat skill, saying he must have had a great teacher. He says this to Mercury Black.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the success of Mountain Glenn, and Mistral's plans to turn Kuroyuri into a new trading hub (and thus dumping more money and supplies into the settlement, including more hunters), Kuroyuri still gets wiped out by the Nuckleavee.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Sun admits he found a Grimm Mask (the uniform of the White Fang) in another Faunus' belongings and produces it. Weiss asks if it's not his and if he's lying. When Ruby protests, Sun admits that it's a valid concern (given that they were chasing him for being a stowaway not ten minutes earlier, and he is, in fact, a Faunus) before showing that said mask clearly doesn't fit him.
  • Katsuki at one point starts insulting Summer Rose to Ruby's face, which is her Berserk Button, and saying how she was too weak, just like Ruby. However, while he was undeniably an ass for that, he did have pure motivations - Ruby's Grade Skipper status means that she missed a lot of important information and she's physically weaker and less skilled than she would have been had she not done that. Furthermore, Summer's disappearance is public knowledge, and it wouldn't be hard for someone less scrupulous than Katsuki to throw that in her face and throw her off. Ultimately, his point is that it doesn't matter her excuses for being less skilled - thrown off by her mom's death or Grade Skipper - their enemies will not care. The Grimm won't stop attacking because Ruby was moved ahead and criminals won't hesitate to shoot her while she's distracted, so Ruby had better get over herself, knuckle down, and get ready for the future. Even Tsuyu, who's watching, can't really disagree.

K-L

• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Many characters like Izuku and Blake are forced to keep secrets about their backgrounds for personal reasons. Blake feels terrible about keeping her identity as a Faunus and a former member of the White Fang under wraps because she feels like it makes her a fraud in front of her new friends at Beacon. Izuku's knowledge of One For All and some of the dealings in Ozpin's office eats away at him because his friends are constantly praising him for being so earnest and straightforward on top of his past shame for being Broken.
• Kids Are Cruel: Izuku was relentlessly bullied for being Broken by Katsuki and his classmates, demeaning Izuku at every possible opportunity, loudly telling him that they expect him to die following his stupid dream, and mocking him when he fails to keep up in combat exercises. This bullying powdered Izuku's self-esteem and left him completely friendless up to the point that he began attending Beacon with a new Aura and Semblance in tow.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • The years Katsuki spent bullying Izuku get paid back in full at Beacon. Between needing to get rescued by Izuku and Toshinori during a freak Grimm attack ten months before Initiation, losing to both Izuku and Ruby in their spars, not having the respect of any of his peers, and getting his ass kicked by Neo.
  • It's not just Katsuki either. Many of the less-talented Birch Academy students who fell in behind him ended up becoming engineers in the tunnels underneath Mountain Glenn as explained in the sidestory "A Bystander's Perspective". One of them, Senbo, is absolutely pissed to learn that not only had Izuku managed to get into Beacon, but he unlocked his Aura and had a god-tier Semblance that could obliterate Nevermores with a finger flick while he was stuck underground learning how to take care of random bits of machinery and hasn't touched his weapon in months. In short, the Broken kid he loved to bully ended up living out his dream while Senbo didn't.
• Legacy Hero: The story is about Izuku, the latest bearer of One For All.
• Lighter and Softer: While there are moments that are darker in this story (see the Darker and Edgier entry above), there's plenty of things that make it a little better.
  • Space Hero 13's counterpart doesn't have to wear the suit that their canon self does; it just helps them use their Semblance. In the original, it's a life support suit that allows 13 to interact with their surroundings without wreaking havoc.
  • The Mountain Glenn attack by the Monochrome League (the equivalent of the USJ attack by the League of Villains) was taken care of without Aizawa getting the brutal beatdown he got in the original or Toshinori pushing his limits to defeat the Nomu, meaning both are in a stronger position than in canon.
  • Mountain Glenn itself never fell, a stark contrast to what happened in RWBY. Because of this, there have been numerous changes to the world, including a high-speed train that will connect it to Vale and Patch (Ruby's and Yang's hometown).
  • There's far more Hunters and Huntresses in the world than in canon, and the world itself is more optimistic.
  • Hunters and huntresses seem more optimistic about the job they do, thanks to Toshinori's attitudes towards the position.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: Despite the story starting on the day everyone arrives at Beacon, the things that happened to the main cast are largely the same: the Red, White, Yellow, and Black trailers still happened without any major changes and are occasionally referenced in-story. Ruby's foiled Torchwick's Dust heist and was transferred to Beacon two years early as before. Izuku's story did change a bit - his "Quirklessness" was replaced with being "Broken," and the Sludge Villain is replaced by rogue Grimm, not to mention other setting-specific details (Mountain Glenn is not near an ocean, thus the "clearing the beach" training montage had to be altered) - but is, again, the same for all intents and purposes. Shoto's past and his father's attempts to create a weapon to dethrone Toshinori as the best in the world are the same, as are Nora and Ren's backstory.
• Little Bit Beastly:
  • The Faunus, as per canon, are this. There's also people from the My Hero Academia side who are adapted into Faunus because of animal traits (such as Tokoyami and Tsuyu). A difference from canon RWBY is that Faunus can regularly have many animal attributes when in canon they are supposedly limited to one trait.
  • Chimeras are a case where this can potentially go wrong. While Faunus have animal traits, Chimeras are what happen when multiple animal traits show up in the same person. It's awkward for Faunus to talk about (since they don't want to be seen as "just animals") and it's a tossup if the animal attributes are useful or not. They can also be the result of interbreeding between different types of Faunus, which means odd combinations of traits expressing themselves. Mina is shown to be one of the lucky ones, as aside from being pink, black eyes, and little yellow horns, she can still go out in public and get normal clothing. Thena, Velvet's youngest sister, has both rabbit ears and rabbit legs, meaning she has a hard time walking around and is implied to need special pants that actually fit her.
• Locked Out of the Loop: The nature of One For All is a tightly kept secret. To the world at large, Izuku was just a really late bloomer who needed a mysterious Huntsman's help to unlock his Aura. The only ones in the know at Beacon are Izuku, Toshinori, Ozpin, Peach, Glynda, Sorahiko Torino, and later Pyrrha, Weiss, Nora, Yang, and Inko. Qrow also knows, and while it's not outright stated, Nighteye is heavily implied to know as well and doesn't approve. It's later revealed that Raven is in on the secret.
• Ludicrous Gibs:
  • Izuku first uses One For All to dispatch a Giant Nevermore after his plan to have Pyrrha kill it failed, blasting the Grimm into a dozen pieces with feathers and guts everywhere as it dissolved.
  • Averted for all Grimm eventually, since they dissolve when they die (as even the prior entry notes). It's why Toshinori insists that the students take a picture of the Grimm they are assigned to kill, so as to prove that they did it.

M-N

• Magic A Is Magic A:
  • Dust is a crystalline substance that can be mined in large quantities or produced artificially. It is always associated with element and is highly volatile when cut, but its miraculous properties make it essential to technological development on Remnant. It's used in appliances, weapons, armor, clothing, and cybernetics, and its usage is a daily part of life.
  • Aura is a physical manifestation of the soul that empowers humans and Faunus who unlock it, providing a degree of Super-Strength, a natural forcefield that can block bullets, heal away damage, bolster one's weapons, and enhance one's senses. Humans, Faunus, and animals all have the potential to manifest an Aura while the Grimm do not. However, a small fraction of the population are born with such weak souls that they can never manifest an Aura or a Semblance. These individuals are known as "Moon Children" or "Broken" and are often treated as disabled, as they tend to have their physical growth stunted.
  • Semblances are a secondary manifestation of the soul that provides a superpower that's usually unique to the individual, like Ruby's Super-Speed or Pyrrha's Magnetism Manipulation.
• Magitek: As in the original RWBY, the vast majority of technology in the story is powered by Dust, including the Huntsmen and Huntresses' various weapons.
• Metaphorically True: When Katsuki confronts Izuku about his new Aura, Izuku says he just needed help to get it. He did need help but from Toshinori and One For All.
• Mistaken for Undead:
  • In the sidestory "Ghostly Activity", Ruby is snooping around late at night while trying to figure out who keeps raiding her hidden cookie stash. She ends up poking her head into a dark room and sees a vaguely humanoid figure that glowed gold and was staring directly at her with neon green eyes. She ends up bolting right there. It turns out Izuku was just meditating and practicing with One For All: Full Cowl.
  • In "A Nightmare Before Solstice", Pyrrha is woken up by the sound of movement in the dead of night while a fierce snowstorm was raging outside. When she goes to investigate, she encounters a skeletal figure with nearly translucent skin, loose, and flabby coverings that coughed up blood all over her. She quickly runs off screaming into the night. It turns out it was just Toshinori who had just come back from a long night of heroing.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: As per RWBY tradition, "It's also a gun". Izuku's own weapon, Emerald Gust, is a set of boots and retractable gauntlets with built-in shotguns to help give his attacks more oomph, having styled them after Toshinori's smashes. Essentially, it's Yang and Mercury's canon weapons, but all on one person.
• Mr. Fanservice: Izuku's muscles make him the primary source of eye candy for the girls in the story, with special attention being paid to his hard-earned six-pack abs. Sun, as per canon, dials up the charm by being a Walking Shirtless Scene with his similarly impressive chest and abs.
• Mukokuseki: The characters all have a variety of skin tones and features that don't necessarily tie them to any one nation. For instance, while Weiss is a short, fair, blue-eyed young woman, Tenya is tall, dark-haired, with features akin to a real-life Japanese person. Names aren't indicative of any one continent either, as Weiss, whose name is derived from German, has ties with Momo Yaoyorozu, a similarly wealthy heiress with a Japanese-style name. Izuku, a native Valeite, makes the mistake of assuming Yatsuhashi was from Mistral based on his combat outfit and name despite having a Japanese-style name himself.
• Mundane Solution: Izuku has to find Aizawa, who is posing as a "Huntsman" who can be found for extra credit. What does Izuku do? He asks Glynda where he is and she tells him.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Zigzagged. Most Hunters are lithe thanks to their Aura giving them Super-Strength that keeps the body from having to develop larger muscles to fight the way they do. But people can workout without using their Aura to improve themselves further, particularly when their Aura is depleted. Broken people don't have the luxury of Aura and Izuku has to sculpt his body into a vessel worthy of One For All in order to survive being given its power. Toshinori is also the tallest and buffest guy in the story as well as the World's Strongest Man, and Yatsuhashi is plenty buff and can lift weights that even Izuku in Full Cowl mode can't.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Katsuki tends to be left out of group announcements because of how irritable he is.
  Yang: Okay ladies, gentlemen and Bakugou-
  Katsuki: Go to [gets punched in the gut] OMPH- Hell!
  Yang: Already there whenever you're around there, Sparky.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Huntsman has this in contrast to canon RWBY, partly because it's combined with My Hero Academia. In RWBY it's said to be impractical to try to grow or strengthen one's Aura, and training is focused more on improving skill and gaining experience rather than becoming more powerful. In this story a fighter's Aura is something that must be built up like a muscle with physical and spiritual effort, creating a very clear power gap between beginners like Izuku, star students like Pyrrha, and veterans like Sorahiko that would have been less pronounced (and primarily based on skill) in RWBY.
• Mythology Gag: The story loves to indulge in this, with many scenes in it being tweaked versions of scenes from My Hero Academia.
  • According to one of the canon omakes, Izuku lives on Horikoshi street. Horikoshi is the author of My Hero Academia.
  • Izuku first uses One For All when he has Tenya throw him into the sky to punch out the Giant Nevermore and save Pyrrha, mirroring how he first uses One For All in his home series to save Uraraka from the giant zero-point robot.
  • Weiss ends up on the same team as Pyrrha, a reference to Weiss' plan in the original RWBY. The kicker is that she's still not the leader, Izuku is.
  • Blake and Yang end up still on the same team, even if they aren't partners this time around.
  • Izuku's desperate fight against Katsuki has lines and actions taken word-for-word from the Heroes vs. Training Exercise, including Izuku's extremely narrow victory over him on a technicality.
  • Izuku is forced to break all ten of his fingers by using his mouth to break his thumb for a Smash during his fight against Yang, which is extremely reminiscent of Izuku's battle against Todoroki during the Sports Festival arc.
  • When Nora overloads on lightning, she starts giving a dopey smile, thumbs up, and repeating the same thing (in this case, "I'm okay!") over and over again, which is the same as what happens to Kaminari when he overloads on lightning (though he tends to go "Wheeeeey" instead).
  • Denki calls Izuku a "lucky curly haired smooth talkin' son of a bitch" after learning that he's dating Yang, a reference to his reaction to finding out that Izuku was alone with Camie Utsushimi, a girl whose Quirk renders her naked.
  • When Yang drags Izuku to a karaoke bar, he chooses to sing "Peace Sign," the second opening of MHA. She chooses to sing "Gold," her theme from RWBY, and she and Izuku sing "I Burn," another song of hers, as a duet.
    • After that, she gives a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech to Izuku, complete with using her fingers to push her mouth into a smile, in a manner similar to one given to Toshinori by Nana, the seventh One For All.
• The Needs of the Many: Toshinori says that this argument is the difference between what is Right and what is Heroic. In Mountain Glenn, the Right thing to do would be to accept the Council of Vale's words, accept that the Tunnels are collapsed, and let them die so as to not allow the Grimm a direct line into the heart of Vale through the train lines. Toshinori, however, chose the Heroic thing to do, which was to go in against orders and save Mountain Glenn, at the potential risk of getting himself killed and potentially sacrificing one of only four human kingdoms remaining. He also claims that this attitude bred an era of Huntsmen who were terrified of doing anything new or different, as it could result in casualties and losses.
• Never Gets Drunk: Played with. In this story, the Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-Training are allowed to drink alcohol as long as they don't do anything destructive while doing so. They can also burn off the effects of alcohol quickly by using their Auras to "heal" it away. But that doesn't mean they can't get drunk and they can still get a hangover if they drink in excess, as the Team Leader meeting after the Long Night shows. Mirio passes out where he sits, Coco vomits in a trash can, and Ruby moans about her headache. It can also not overcome the effects of drinking rapidly, as shown when Izuku goes out drinking with Toshinori and downs two drinks in quick succession.
• Nice Guy/Nice Gal: Izuku, Ruby, and Pyrrha are as sweet as ever.
• No Hero Discount:
  • Izuku quickly learns that being a Huntsman is expensive, spending hundreds or even thousands of lien on upgrading and maintaining Emerald Gust, buying and repairing his clothes, and making sure he's stocked up on medical supplies and ammo. That's not even getting into the money he spends on regular school supplies, gifts, and other things for his friends, and for necessities like food. While he gets some help from Pyrrha's and Weiss's sizable fortunes for team expenditures, he doesn't want to rely on them for his own equipment.
  • Subverted during Color Week. While visiting home for Hunter's Day, Izuku finds that Ni Hao Nyan, a Mistrali restaurant chain, gives all Huntsmen and Huntresses half-off on their meal in celebration of the holiday (though it also helps that Pyrrha Nikos, a Mistralian championship fighter, is with them at the time).
• Not Hyperbole:
  • When hunting an Ursa, Nora claims she wishes that she could ride one as bear cavalry and kill all the other Grimm. When Izuku and Pyrrha look at her in confusion, Weiss (remembering initiation) points out that Nora has done it before. Twice.
  • Kaminari and Kirishima tell Izuku that their team got invited to a birthday party, so Momo claimed she would have her cake butler stop by with some great cake for the party. The rest of the team laughed it up until she showed up at said party with said cake butler.

O-R

• Off with His Head!: Numerous Grimm, particularly Beowolves, fall victim to this trope. Izuku first realizes just how far he's come from Initiation when he starts easily taking off their heads and breaking their necks with just his Full Cowl-enhanced punches and kicks during his final exam in Live Exercises.
• Official Couple: Izuku and Yang, or Dragonfruit.
• Oh, My Gods!: The default exclamation of surprise is "Gods!" due to the worship of the brother gods in Remnant's creation myth.
• Omake: The fic has hundreds of canon and non-canon sidestories that have been written by the author and devoted followers.
• One Stat to Rule Them All:
  • Readers quickly realized that IQ was the most important stat Izuku could possibly grind since each additional point of IQ gave him an extra action to use per phase, which lets him cram in more training sessions to boost his other stats and keep up with his growing list of socials. The author realized this and put a cap on the number of IQ Izuku could earn to prevent abuse. This was later applied to the author's second Quest, The Web of The Spider-Man, which made it harder to grind IQ.
  • Among skills, Izuku's Aura and usage of One For All are the most important by far. Aura level determines how much FP Izuku has to absorb attacks he can't dodge or block on his own and burn it to improve his chances of success on hit, skill, and defensive rolls. It also provides passive damage reduction, which is essential to keeping Izuku healthy in a firefight where bullets are whizzing around everywhere. One For All drastically increases Izuku's power to the point of ranking up his roll, turning critical failures into normal failures and successes into critical successes at the cost of breaking a limb and taking 5 HP in damage. One For All: Full Cowl accesses a fraction of that power to boost Izuku's Strength and Dexterity stats by 4 at 5%, scaling upwards as the percentage he can handle increases.
• Our Souls Are Different:
  • The story's interpretation of the soul operates on many of the same principles as the original RWBY. Every living being (sans the Grimm) is born with a soul. With enough impetus, a soul is usually able to awaken one's Aura, granting the user the ability to create Deflector Shields to defend against attacks and perform Ki Manipulations that grant superhuman strength and speed. Aura can also be channeled into weapons and armor or used to fuel a Semblance, a powerful ability that is usually unique to an individual (but can be inherited by one's offspring), granting a wide variety of almost magical effects. The primary difference is that people in this story can be born "Broken". Broken Souls have gaps in their makeup that render them too weak to ever awaken an Aura or develop a Semblance. For people like Izuku, this can be humiliating and the source of scorn and bullying, especially because he wanted to be a Huntsman more than anything. It is also considered a disability as Aura helps push along one's natural growth. Because of this, Izuku is noticeably shorter than his canon counterpart at the start of the story, only making up the difference after more than a year of training and spending several months with an Aura.
  • Another difference in the setting is the idea that it's possible to increase the strength of one's Aura through training. Kerry said in an interview that it was impractical to try and improve the size and strength of one's Aura. But in this story, constant usage, meditation, and simply pushing one's physical limits can all contribute to building up a more powerful and useful Aura, which can also enhance the power of one's Semblance. Sufficient training can also lead to breakthroughs known as "Awakenings" that greatly bolster one's Aura in a rush of power.
  • Aura users are also able to remain in peak form for longer periods of time. Glynda looks like she's in her mid-20s or early 30s despite being as old as Toshinori due to application of her Aura. But this usage of Aura can wear out the body's connection to the soul faster, which can lead them to die at around 80-100 years old. Those who don't care about their appearance and form, like Sorahiko, can live to 130 and still kick the average Huntsman's ass.
  • Because of the settings being fused, Semblances and Quirks are fused into the same thing. However, this also changes an aspect of Semblances that was only lightly touched on in RWBY- that Semblances are unique to each individual, and that only the Schnee family has one that's passed down in family lines (their glyphs). Because Quirks can be passed down in family lines (as shown with Shouto's powerset and his issues with Enji), this story changes it so that the Schnee family is not the only one to have familial semblances, and several characters have traits passed down from their lines such as Shouto's powers and Iida's semblance-less-ness.
• One-Steve Limit: Thankfully played straight, unlike canon, which had the Ruby, leader of Team RWBY, stars of RWBY (the show).
• Outside-Context Problem: According to Ozpin, the Monochrome League are this. He and his conspiracy have been fighting against his enemy for countless years, but there's been a pattern to Ozpin and Salem's moves - move, countermove, slow, and deliberate. Then the Monochrome League showed up out of nowhere, without warning, and nearly manage to destroy one of the most heavily defended cities in Remnant, have absolutely no connection to Salem, yet have massive resources. What's worse is that despite Ozpin's vast resources, he can't tell who or what they really are, who their allies are, whom they owe allegiance or... anything. They just seemed to show up out of nowhere.
• The Paragon: Toshinori's example as an exemplar of strength, hope, and optimism has inspired entire generations of Huntsmen to try to follow in his footsteps, Izuku and Ruby among them. Pyrrha also says that she was a big fan of him in the past. Izuku is becoming this among his friends too, inspiring them to always push themselves harder.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: In the absence of payment, Hunters, even Hunters-in-Training, are allowed to frisk the pockets of the criminals they've captured for compensation. Depending on how many mooks get taken down, this can be surprisingly profitable.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Certain socials and story ideas can only happen if Izuku happens to explore certain parts of Vale or speaks with certain people. In addition, certain socials will be lost if they aren't maintained. This gets lampshaded by the author after the Junior sidequest ends on a sour note:
    "Howdy there, I'm gorilla_fingers, and I burned 80% of the [Junior] Side Quest and its content, including its possible better outcomes, because you guys didn't pursue it. I am not so afraid of you missing out on stuff that I'll throw up my skirt to show it off. If you make the choice to ignore it, well, life goes on and the game doesn't pause."
  • Some of the "Achievements" at the end of major plot points will highlight this, such as an optional boss battle against a very powerful Grimm that was skipped in the Mountain Glenn tunnel systems.
• Perspective Flip: Numerous Omakes examine the events of the story from the perspective of characters other than Izuku, as do certain interlude sections in the main story.
• Pilot: This snippet in the Spacebattles My Hero Academia Snips page was posted a few weeks before the quest started and shows off Izuku's actions in the entrance exam. There are changes- for example, the fight against the Grimm is more similar to what canon RWBY would show as the Deathstalker fight vs. JNPR, and likewise, the Grimm Izuku uses his power on is said Deathstalker. While Jaune was still not a factor in this early stage, Team CRDL would be replaced by Team FEBY (February) consisting of Fumikage Tokoyami, Eijiro Kirishima, Bakugou Katsuki, and Yaoyorozu Momo. Further, these were supposed to be the only My Hero Academia characters to translate over into the main cast.
• Planet of Hats: Or rather, town of hats, but Mountain Glenn is known for producing people who are survivalists, high-quality engineers, or both, as a result of their near-destruction at the hands (and paws and talons) of the Grimm. Their other hat is a near-worship level of adoration for Toshinori, though again, given that he was their savior, is somewhat understandable.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: In the sidestory, "Storm Flower in Bloom", Ruby brings Ren to Mei so that she can repair his weapon Storm Flower, she tries to tell the latter that Ren is ambidextreous a few times before saying that he's great with both hands.
• Power Fist: Both Emerald Gust and Ember Celica are mecha gauntlets with built-in shotguns. Katsuki has a pair called "Lord Explosion Murder," and "King Explosion Murder" that channel his blasts more effectively.
• Psycho for Hire: Tenya reveals that the higher social strata of Atlas suspect that the "former Huntsman" Stain who has been killing major business leaders is actually under Headmaster Ironwood's employ. Neither Izuku nor Tenya believe these rumors to be true.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Kaminari and Shoto both carry a high-caliber pistol for when they overuse their Semblances. Glynda suggests that Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu pick one up as well, despite how "unmanly" it might be.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": During a rescue exercise, Owari Meisai, a student who beat Izuku in his first spar, tries to use a black pellet identical to the one he used against Izuku to trip him up. Izuku notices this and responds with a Glenn Smash to deflect it while saying no over and over.
• Real Men Cook: Izuku learns to cook in order to satisfy Nora's pancake cravings in this story and ends up baking a cake for Pyrrha's birthday. It's so good that Katsuki ends up shoveling four plates of it into his mouth while saying that he didn't come to the birthday party just for the cake. Ren is an even better cook than Izuku, to the point that his "failed" pancakes are considered heavenly by everyone other than Nora.
• Recoil Boost: Yang and Katsuki can use their weapons and Semblance to pull this off respectively. Izuku can as well, but it only comes up once since Emerald Gust takes a while to reload.
• Running Gag
  • When Blake fights against criminal Faunus, they will inevitably and specifically call her a human. They'll do this to literally no one else but her.
  • Every time Izuku spars with Weiss, something bad happens. After one too many incidents, the option to spar with Weiss is suspended with a declaration that the matchup is cursed.

S-T

• Scars Are Forever: Mostly subverted. Aura protects one's body and heals it rapidly enough to prevent scarring in most cases. But those born without Aura like Izuku don't have this luxury, which is why he hasn't scarred himself permanently with One For All but still has the callouses from his training to obtain it. But in cases of severe injury, even Aura might not be able to prevent scarring or worse. Weiss' Dueling Scar, Toshinori's Game-Breaking Injury, and Shoto's eye scar are examples of this.
• Schizo Tech: The technology level in RWBY is far beyond the modern world, with complex folding mechanisms, elemental weapons, tiltjets, and other feats of engineering being commonplace. The only reason no one has gone into space is because Dust doesn't work in space, preventing satellite technology. Instead, four massive communication towers were built to provide long-range communication between the continents.
• Second-Person Narration: The entire story is written this way no matter whose perspective is being followed due to the GURPS-style structure of the narrative that actively encourages reader input on the way things are going to go.
• Secret Identity: For the most part, this trope is averted as Huntsmen and Huntresses have no need for a secret identity. Toshinori, however, has one for his depowered form so that he can still do things without revealing that this scrawny skeleton-man who coughs up blood is the true form of the Symbol of Peace.
• Self-Deprecation: A meta one; when they get done fighting a burrowing Grimm, Izuku and Pyrrha joke to one another that Nora will probably exaggerate their victory to Ren, saying it was 30 yards long instead of the 30 feet it actually is. This is the author acknowledging he made a mistake earlier in the fight where he claimed the monster was the larger size instead of the smaller one.
• Serious Business: Izuku and Ren get into a fierce, but friendly rivalry over pancakes, with Izuku constantly trying to push his pancake-making skills to match Ren's, who sets the bar higher and higher. This gets so serious that Ren ends up spying on Izuku and recording everything from what time he gets up in the morning to what underwear he puts on any given day.
• Shotguns Are Just Better:
  • Both Izuku and Yang use Power Fists with built-in shotguns. Tsu eventually gets a knife-shotgun hybrid. Sun's weapon is essentially four sawed-off shotguns in staff form.
  • The narration and gameplay mechanics, however, make a point to say that because how Grimm biology is entirely homogeneous, buckshot rounds like those shotguns typically use are largely ineffective except at point-blank range.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the "achievements" Izuku earned for passing Initiation is, "You're a Huntsman, Izuku!"
  • After wrecking one of the gauntlets of Emerald Gust with his first use of One For All, Izuku ends up having both of his gauntlets modified so that they can slide over the fingers by disengaging the safeties and off by re-engaging them so he can use his Semblance without wrecking them again. This mechanism is reminiscent of the hand guards of the Burning Gundam, which slide back when it's utilizing◊ the Erupting Burning Finger.
  • Izuku and Ozpin play gungi in their second meeting.
  • The act of training one's Aura, which is considered impractical in the original RWBY, through meditation and reaching breakthroughs that lead to the next stage of development is a nod to the Xianxia genre.
  • During the investigation into the bathroom bombings, Izuku has multiple options to close the case, which include confronting Cardin honestly and playing it by the rules like Zenigata or being a Cowboy Cop because he's feeling lucky. He also has the option to report directly to Ozpin, upon which he can use his keen eye for detail to show that only one truth prevails or go out of his way to prove it simply because it's the only choice he has.
  • When Pan Minos is done thoroughly scaring the crap out of Izuku, she calls him a a poor, naive summer child when he questions her methods.
  • While visiting home for Hunter's Day, Izuku and his friends end up stopping by Ni Hao Nyan for lunch.
  • The Vale docks where the White Fang are gathering for a massive Dust heist for future plans, are named after comic book crime bosses, including Fisk Pier, Lincoln Yard, and Falcone Shipping. The senior White Fang members leading the operations are all designed after The Three Caballeros.
  • Kaminari tries to pick up girls by placing a hand on their shoulder and going, "Hey."
• Situational Sword: While there are lots of Semblances and powers that are great for lots of situations, like One For All or Shoto's Half-Hot, Half Cold, there are Semblances that work better on specific targets, such as Pyrrha, Professor Aizawa, and Professor Nemuri (all their Semblances are more tailored to fight people, and have limited, if any, effect on Grimm).
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Ruby is the only girl on a team with three guys.
  • Nejire of Team MHA is an example... but wasn't one at first, only becoming so after the other female team member left.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Hunters are specialists akin to superheroes who can take on Grimm in large numbers on their own. But each kingdom also has their own standing army to defend areas where Hunters can't.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Mountain Glenn is in ruins in the original RWBY, but is instead a small but thriving metropolis in My Huntsman Academia thanks to Toshinori's efforts and all the Hunters who followed him in.
• The Spartan Way:
  • As in the original RWBY, Initiation at Beacon starts with launching prospective students into a dense forest full of bloodthirsty monsters.
    Ozpin: Destroy what stands in your way of course, they will kill you if you don't.
  • This trope is lessened, as Izuku finds out later from Toshinori, as the whole thing is monitored closely by the Teachers so as not to take unnecessary risks (they also imply that they go out and take care of Grimm that are too large for initiates to handle before they begin initiation). It's still dangerous, and people can still die... but it's not as bad as Ozpin implies.
• Squee:
  • Both Izuku and Ruby tend to do this in the presence of famous Hunters, but it's Izuku's reactions that tend to provoke the largest responses from others.
  • Flashbacks to the past reveal that Summer Rose (Ruby's mom) was like this too around Toshinori.
  • Lulu's presence will tend to provoke this from those nearby (Blake being the obvious exception, of course).
• Stealth Pun: Many carried over from RWBY with a few originals thrown in.
  • The monsters are called Grimm and Ruby cuts them to pieces with her scythe, making her a literal "Grimm Reaper".
  • Vale sounds like "Veil" which can mean a "Curtain". Where does the great and powerful Oz hide again?
  • Blake's Semblance lets her create clones of herself as decoys. She's a cat Faunus. Hence, she's a "copycat".
  • Semblances are normally unique to each person with the exception of Semblances like Enji Todoroki's and the Schnees'. In the latter case, their snow and ice motif makes them special snowflakes.
  • Izuku has a green Color Motif going for him and he's only had his Aura for two days by the time of Initiation and comparatively little combat training. This makes him a greenhorn by Beacon's standards.
  • Izuku is constantly reminded of his Broken days by his struggle to control One For All, which breaks his arms and legs frequently.
  • At one point, Izuku comments that "One For All had its share of quirks." Aside from being a reference to how the superpowers in My Hero Academia are called "Quirks", it's a bit Dramatic Irony on how One For All is revealed to be able to eventually let its users use all the previous owners' abilities in canon.
• Story Within a Story: In one non-canon omake, Izuku is writing a "Journey" on "GalaxySkirmishes" in his free time that gets mistaken for a Self-Insert Fic. He insists that it isn't, passing his friends notes that declare the story's title to be "The Spectacular Spider-Man". This also acts as an advertisement for the author's latest work, The Web of The Spider-Man.
• Superhero Sobriquets: Many of the Huntsmen in the story have epithets and titles. It's especially prevalent for Huntsmen and Huntresses who originated from My Hero Academia, as their Hero Name is often turned into an example of this trope. For instance, Toshinori is referred to as the Symbol of Peace and Hope and the All Mighty Huntsman.
• Superhero Speciation:
  • Semblances are usually unique to the individual, except in the cases where a Semblance is powerful enough to be hereditary, like Enji's fire Semblance and the Schnees' Glyphs. One For All is another exception to this rule as a unique Semblance that can be passed from wielder to wielder and can even grant a Broken Soul an Aura.
  • The author has gone out to say that he made the Iidas unable to produce a Semblance specifically to distinguish Tenya from Ruby, who are both known for their super speed.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Some families are predisposed to have strong Auras (i.e. the Iidas) and some (i.e. the Schnees) have hereditary Semblances. This is in contrast to RWBY, which only has the Schnees as an example of this trope.
  • Inverted with the Iida bloodline, which has the ability to produce remarkably weak Auras, which they compensate for with powered armor.
• Surprisingly Normal Backstory:
  • Aside from receiving some occasional anti-Faunus racism, Tsuyu's life story is normal compared to her peers, growing up around her many family members near the swampier parts of Vale. Compare that to The Chosen One (Izuku), the heiress to the most powerful company in the world (Weiss), a four-time tournament champion (Pyrrha), the scions of distinguished Huntsmen families (Tenya and Shoto), two orphans with a Dark and Troubled Past, (Ren and Nora), the valedictorian of Birch Academy (Katsuki), a Grade Skipper (Ruby), and a former terrorist (Blake).
    • Katsuki is a lesser example of this- while he was Valedictorian at Birch, he's one of the few members of his peers to have a stable, nuclear family and his background is mostly normal.
  • Team MHA are unusual, as they don't have a fourth member. Izuku initially fears that something happened to the fourth member, and is hesitant to ask what happened to her (thinking she died or was crippled, or something horrible)... only for the team to reveal that she was talented, but her heart wasn't in it and eventually dropped out peacefully. They don't hold it against her or anything, and accept that it was just something that sometimes happens. It turns out to be subverted, though, given the identity of the fourth member.
• Swords Set To Stun: In most fights, Aura usually protects its bearer from serious injury, allowing bladed weapons to be used without causing actual physical harm. But for those who aren't shielded by Aura or have weak, underdeveloped Auras (like the average Mook and Izuku at the start of the story), they can suffer more serious injuries. Izuku in particular has had his ribs broken repeatedly in spars until his Aura grew enough to protect them. Fully averted for robots and Grimm, who don't have Aura to protect them.
• Tactical Withdrawal:
  • When the Giant Nevermore shows itself in Initiation, one of the options presented for Izuku to take was to do this. This is ultimately averted.
  • While trying to escape the Underground Training Facility, Izuku and co. come across hordes of Grimm. Rather than fight them, Ren decides to use his Semblance so they can sneak past them to save them time, energy, and valuable Aura.
  • When pitted against Pyrrha in an exercise, Izuku chooses to dodge her and go straight for the objective, as he knows he'll get his ass kicked in a straight fight.
• A Tale Told by an Idiot: Nora tends to call Izuku's Glenn Smash a "finger-bang" thanks to its explosive power at the cost of breaking a finger. Unfortunately, whenever she says he "finger-banged" someone else, people tend to think of much kinkier things. It's briefly Played for Drama when Momo comes to the conclusion that he sexually assaulted a girl in broad daylight without any form of retribution from Nora's description of his fight against Yang.
• The Team:
  • Hunters-in-Training are divided up into teams of four consisting of two pairs of curriculum-long partners with one designated team leader. Each team is named after an acronym formed from the first letter of each member's first or last name. At Beacon, these teams can easily end up as a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, as partner selection is determined solely by eye contact and retrieving a matching set of relics.
  • This is actually deconstructed somewhat by team EGNT, as the rivalry between Enji and Toshinori eventually led to the team breaking up, since the system just slaps people together without regard for personal circumstance, just "Who made eye contact" and "Who happened to coincidentally pick up a chess piece that matched yours."
• Teens Are Monsters: Izuku's bullying didn't stop when he reached combat school, as his peers loudly mocked him as a fool who's destined to get himself killed than achieve anything in life. It's also implied that they repeatedly told him to go off himself somewhere and continually picked on him with full knowledge that they're tormenting what amounts to be a disabled person. Luckily, the vast majority of students at Beacon aren't this, but there are still unrepentant bullies lingering around like Cardin.
• Tempting Cookie Jar: Ruby has a cookie jar she hides in her dorm room when she wants a quick snack. Unbeknownst to her, it's frequently raided by her teammate, Katsuki, who also possesses a pronounced Sweet Tooth.
• "Test Your Strength" Game: One of these is set up for Hunter's Day in Mountain Glenn. Yang, Nora, and Coco beat it with ease even without their Semblances. Izuku is horribly embarrassed when he comes up just short despite more than a year of Training from Hell and months of living with an Aura.
• Theme Naming:
  • As per RWBY canon, several members of Ozpin's inner circle are named after characters from The Wizard of Oz. Ozpin himself is named after the Wizard, whose full name spelled out O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D. Glynda is named after Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. General Ironwood is named after a Russian translation of the Tin Man's name. Qrow Branwen is associated with the Scarecrow. Lionheart references the Cowardly Lion.
  • Just as they're named after American states and cities in their home series, Izuku's and Toshinori's smashes are named after places on Remnant in this series.
  • Characters from RWBY are named after colors. This is somewhat lessened in this story due to the influx of characters from properties that don't have this naming restriction. Funnily enough, Izuku's name fits this theme despite not being from RWBY.
• Token Boy: Izuku and Tenya are both the leaders and the only guys on their respective teams, which each have three girls.
• Too Dumb to Live: This is Neo's opinion on the Monochrome League for deliberately gunning for the Symbol of Peace. She doesn't know about Toshinori's weakness, so to her, it seems like a bunch of kids trying to kill an Ursa with sticks and cardboard armor.

U-Z

• Undressing the Unconscious: Shoto has to strip an unconscious Weiss to get her cold, wet clothes off of her after she got caught in a frigid blizzard. When Weiss learns this, the idea he saw her naked leaves her so embarrassed that she faints.
• Un-Sorcerer:
  • An unlucky fraction of the Human and Faunus population have such weak souls that they will never obtain the ability to manifest an Aura or a Semblance. These people are referred to as "Broken" or more poetically as "Moon Children" or "Born of the Moon". Izuku is one of these unlucky few, but was doggedly determined to become a Huntsman anyway even though it would probably get him killed. Luckily for him, he obtained an Aura after inheriting One For All. Toshinori was also Broken prior to obtaining One For All.
  • Tenya and the rest of the Iida line have a lessened version of this. While they tend to possess naturally strong Auras, something about them makes it impossible for them to develop a Semblance. They developed their signature brand of Power Armor to alleviate this, granting them incredible speed with specialized Wind Dust cartridges.
• Villainous Valour: After Izuku knocks out a White Fang lieutenant who went by "The Admiral", one of his subordinates tries to avenge him. Izuku is shocked when this fervent White Fang grunt manages to bat away his 10% Full Cowl kicks through sheer willpower and determination. It takes a sneak attack from behind to get this grunt to go down.
• We Help the Helpless:
  • Izuku's and Ruby's motivation to become Hunters is to help people who can't defend themselves and bring them hope in their time of need. In Izuku's case, this was instilled in him by Toshinori.
  • One canon omake called "Charitable Disadvantage," has Izuku's quick trip to the store turned into an all-day affair because he keeps stopping to help people, like a bullied Faunus child, an overworked homeless shelter worker, and an old woman with back problems.
• Weird Moon: The moon is partially shattered, causing bits to be scattered but held in orbit by the moon's remaining gravity. It's always depicted in full glow and the shattered parts can be completely hidden depending on the moon's phase. The terms "Moon Child" and "Broken" are derived from this, as they're considered incomplete or shattered when compared to people with normal souls.
• Wham Episode:
  • Canon Outtake 237, "Itch," is a big one. For the first time in the story, All For One, the Big Bad of My Hero Academia, communicates with his underlings. In addition, he casually name-drops Salem, the Big Bad of RWBY, confirming outright that both these characters exist. While it was fairly safe to assume that they did — the Monochrome League and the League of Villains and the existence of the Grimm made it fairly clear — but this was the first out-and-out confirmation in the quest's canon.
  • Second Semester Week 9 Late Phase is a very big one: Pyrrha, Weiss, Nora, and Yang now all know about One for All, having been the first people that Izuku willingly revealed his secret to after finding out from Toshinori that All for One is still alive, something that could very easily put his friends and family in severe danger.
• Wham Line:
  • "That's just the kind of person Spumoni is." Said by Mirio about the name of his fourth team member. The reason this is a wham line is that Spumoni is the name of Neo's sister, who died well before the events that led to the fourth person leaving team MHA — and revealing that Neo was in fact the fourth member of the team.
  • "Everyone... I'm... going to need you all to listen to me a moment. There's something you all deserve to hear." Said by Blake before she proceeded to explain everything about her past from being a secret cat faunus to being a former member of the White Fang to everyone present (Teams MNVW, RSBR, TABY, and MADE, Sun, Aizawa, Sorahiko, Enji, and Ozpin). This, in turn, results in Izuku confessing to the four teams and Sun over the course of Spring Break that he already knew about all this and kept it a secret.
    • Preceding that: "It's time, Izuku. There's no running from it anymore. Not now." Said in reply to Izuku's comment about what she's going to do about her ears now that they're no longer hidden by her ribbon.
• What If?:
  • The "Raven Stayed AU" explores the events of the story if Raven had stayed to raise Yang instead of leaving to return to the Branwen Tribe. In this story, Yang is coarser and even more of a Blood Knight than usual without Ruby to cultivate her sisterly and motherly instincts (though she does have two (as of yet unnamed) younger siblings). Because Raven never left, that meant that Summer never had a chance to move in, and thus Ruby doesn't exist either... although for some reason Summer is still alive in this AU. Yang is far more of a Socially Awkward Hero, unable to say much of anything without it coming across as a boast or an insult even when she means it with the best of intentions. She also realizes her feelings for Izuku much earlier, becoming determined to ask him out but can't articulate herself before her friends barge in. Raven isn't very happy that her daughter is interested in the 9th host of One For All, and lets out an Atomic F-Bomb when her other children leave the house.
  • The "What if they met when they were 13" AU is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and based on a comment of Izuku's that if he and Yang had met when they were 13, they probably wouldn't have been friends. The AU explores how wrong that idea is. It also has Yang confronting her father about Raven far earlier, Katsuki and others in Mountain Glenn reining in the bullying thanks to repeated encounters with a certain blonde, and leads to Qrow meeting Izuku and recommending him as a possible successor for One For All to Toshinori before even canon Izuku had met the man.
  • The "Broken" AU takes place in a world where Izuku broke down after hearing from Toshinori that he couldn't be a Hunter, and thus was recruited by Ozpin to be a Hunter without Aura via power armor crafted by Mei Hatsumei and Tenya's older brother, and does not involve him getting One For All or Aura.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Zigzagged. Izuku and co. try not to kill when they're fighting people, but the mooks can still get shot in the gut or have their bones broken once their Auras break. On the other hand, those same mooks are rarely mentioned again and they're never seen receiving medical attention.
• Win Her a Prize: Yang and Izuku stop by a carnival while playing a game of romantic chicken during Color Week. She gives him tips on how to win a rigged game at one of the stands and asks him to win her a prize, waiting to see what he gets for her to watch his reaction for laughs. While hanging out again in Mountain Glenn, she returns the favor, winning him a Toshinori plush while making him blush with her usual flirtatiousness. In that same game, Nora wins Tsuyu a frog stuffed animal, though there are no romantic intentions behind it- Nora just felt bad that Tsuyu couldn't join them in Mountain Glenn.
• A World Half Full: For a world filled with heroes, high-octane action, and humor, Remnant is a rather dangerous place to live. There are only four major safe havens from the Grimm on the planet and attempts to expand often failed (and in Mountain Glenn's case, was barely saved and restricted to a much smaller settlement than originally planned). The seedy criminal underworld undermines even these places of sanctuary and it's clear that forces are conspiring against the peace and safety of humanity and Faunus alike. At the same time, Beacon radiates positivity and there are plenty of plucky teenagers with superpowers who are raring to fight the good fight in the name of protecting everything they hold dear, not to mention the World's Symbol of Peace and Justice, Toshinori Yagi.
• World of Badass: Remnant is filled with bloodthirsty Grimm, insanely badass Huntsmen and Huntresses with crazy Mix-and-Match Weapons, ninjas, and beast people. Even dogs can be trained to hunt monsters and defeat Mini Mechas.
• Wrong Context Magic:
  • One For All is a unique Semblance that can be handed down from one user to the next and has the power to give a Broken Soul an Aura. Its opposite, All For One, has the ability to rip the souls out of other people's bodies to acquire and distribute their Semblances and Auras while sidestepping the usual Loss of Identity from having another person's Aura transferred into them.
  • Certain Semblances are powerful enough to be handed down from parent to child. The Schnees' Glyphs are one of these rare hereditary Semblances. Enji Todoroki married his wife with the explicit intent to produce an heir who possesses both of their Semblances and succeeded.
  • The Maidens are able to use real magic separate from Dust and Semblances, but as of the first week of second semester, there aren't any examples of it.
• You Mean "Xmas": Color Week and the Long Night are essentially Golden Week and Halloween in everything but name. The Solstice is essentially Christmas.

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