Fanfic / Relic of the Future

Art by Jack--Wayne

"Victory can prove bitter, especially when you're the only one alive to see it. With the world in chaos and everyone he ever loved dead, Jaune Arc makes a deal with the devil for one last chance to go back and change it all. But devils don't play by the same rules as humans, and Salem never did say how far back he'd go. Or how much deeper the war between her and Ozpin really went."

— FanFiction.Net summary.

In this RWBY fanfic written by Coeur Al'Aran, Salem lies defeated but at the cost of all of the main cast but Jaune dead and most of the world in ruins. With her dying breaths Salem offers Jaune a deal: use the Relics to send Jaune into the past so that he can hopefully change enough to prevent this outcome from happening, either in Jaune's favor with Salem defeated and his friends still alive or in Salem's with her defeat prevented. Having nothing else to live for Jaune accepts.

...and ends up much further in the past then he thought he'd be. Ten years before he went to Beacon Academy.

At over 1,120,000 words, it is Coeur's single longest work at time of writing.^note If one considers Professor Arc and its sequel "the same fic" and adds their word counts together, they just barely beat Relic. Otherwise, only Forged Destiny comes anywhere close, just barely not beating Relic.

It can be read here at FanFiction.Net.

As of March 2023, it has the single highest follow count, and the third-highest favorite count, of any fic in the RWBY category on FanFiction.Net.

Status: Complete as of November 13, 2021.

Has a recursive fanfic called The Ashari Files which is a collection of side stories set throughout the story.

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Relic of the Future contains examples of:

# - C

• Abusive Dad:
  • Junior's father King is a worse father than Alexander Nikos and pre-character development Jacques Schnee combined. He savagely and mercilessly beats his son at the slightest ghost of a provocation in front of others, and he reminds Junior that he killed the latter's mother as a threat and a taunt. Junior kills his old man himself the first chance he gets.
  • Alexander Nikos tries to slap his eldest daughter for disagreeing with him. This on top of his demands that Pyrrha win every tournament she enters or she's worthless.
• Accidental Murder: After realizing he can steal Amber's Maiden powers, Jaune intends to simply take her powers and let her leave. To his horror, she instead crumbles to dust.
• The Ace: Jaune can come across as this. He's a former Atlesian Specialist that was part of one of the most successful teams in Atlas' history, two of his three students have gone on to win national tournaments both on their first try, he's a board member of the premier telecommunications company on Remnant, and he is friends with numerous highly placed people. Everyone that he worked with while he was a Specialist had nothing but praise for him.
• Act of True Love: Emerald seems to interpret Jaune's extremely brutal defense of her and Ruby as this. Pyrrha, after living that moment through Emerald's eyes, says that "she" loved him for what he did.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Roman laughs when Jaune says no god should be cruel enough to allow more than one Neo to exist.
  • Watts is, in his own words, "bitterly amused" when it turns out that Raven has a bond with Pyrrha that she uses to rescue her.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Adam Taurus doesn't have a branded eye in this story. Originally a case of Outdated by Canon, Chapter 70 has Jaune surmise that Winter being in charge of SDC security in this timeline may have something to do with that.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Jaune notes that Yang is much stronger than she was at this point in the last timeline, as are his other students. While he finds it difficult to be sure, he thinks she's just under her starting-Beacon power levels and skill, and she's only fifteen (as opposed to the 17 that she was when she started Beacon).
  • Every one of Jaune's students at the ASH gym have passed the qualification tests for Beacon, to the point that even Glynda is excited about the upcoming students. Notable is Sky Lark, one of Beacon's cowardly punching bags in the original timeline, who takes well to Jaune's training and becomes one of the best in his gender and age group, to the point of being able to give a good challenge to Yang.
  • Weiss and Whitley fall under this. While Weiss in canon didn't get to perfect the Schnee Semblance until after Beacon fell, and Whitley was... himself, Winter staying with the SDC allowed her more time at home to teach her siblings. As such, they enter the ASH Gym with control over their semblances greater than what they'd have at the time canon started, which they prove by doing lots of summoning (a skill Weiss first accomplished in canon at the end of season 3, two years and change in the future). Whitley also goes on to enroll in Beacon at 15.
  • Chapter 45 reveals that the Jaune Arc of this timeline is being trained by Raven Branwen, one of the strongest people in the setting.
  • Melanie and Miltia both enroll in Beacon.
  • Oscar's training isn't distracted by travel and catastrophe, and Ozma is there the whole time instead of hiding himself away for months like he did in the original timeline. As such, the boy is powerful enough to fight Jaune and Raven to a standstill. Or rather, Ozma can do that, because in the process of unlocking all of that power, the boy Oscar is already gone.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • In the Volume 5 finale of RWBY, it is heavily implied that Raven murdered the Spring Maiden for her power. Her version of events here sheds a little light on what happened. In this story, the Spring Maiden was so desperate to be rid of her responsibility that she considered joining Salem and attacked Raven when she tried to reason with her. Raven fought her to the death out of self defence and because her distrust of Ozpin does not blind her to the fact that Salem could and would use the girl's power to wreak havoc on the world.
  • Adam Taurus, of all people. "Specialist Ashari" made a powerful impression on him and Blake by defusing a mob violence incident between White Fang civil protesters and Atlesian law enforcement through a single display of strength that boiled down to "all of you behave yourselves or else." This motivates Adam to try and become stronger and more influential within the White Fang earlier than in canon, which combined with the White Fang's sudden turn to terrorism (also Jaune's fault via Tyrian and Hazel) before he crossed the line himself allowed Blake to become a much more effective moral and emotional support for him.
  • Roman... to an extent. He's more heroic in that he has standards, but he's still a very bad man. Jaune isn't sure if it's because it's earlier in his career or Cinder was forcing his hand to make him do the things he did later on. He shows disgust at the thought of children being killed in mass numbers when Jaune makes up a story about the Aura-Transfer machine being used to create super soldiers potentially being stolen by the White Fang, and Roman comes to the conclusion that the students of Beacon would be the first victims.
  • Emerald, compared to her canon self, was raised by Jaune and isn't going to fall under the sway of Cinder Fall. That said, while she does want to fight against the forces of evil, she isn't purely heroic, and tends to define things in terms of "What's good for Jaune," rather than in her own self-interest. She is getting better though.
  • Discussed by Jaune in relation to Lionheart, but he says that the fact that Salem was able to force him to behave the way she wanted him to, followed by all his actions in the old timeline, means that even if he was a good man when he meets him before the Mistral Tournament, Jaune will never trust him with anything. He has a point; Leonardo is just as treacherous in this timeline.
  • In the original Before The Dawn novel, Bertilak remained loyal to the Crown up until they actively betray him, though his loyalty boils down to Only in It for the Money in the first place. Here, he actively turns against them first by informing Jaune about their human trafficking operation, making his genuine disgust with them clear from the get-go.
  • Salem turns out to be slightly less villainous than she was revealed to be in canon, where her plan is to summon the Gods to destroy the world and hopefully die with it. Here she doesn't even want to wipe out humanity, but rather to keep a small population alive who will use little-to-no Dust, thus stopping the planet from running out of magic and collapsing. She even considers pulling back further when Jaune suggests he try and develop an energy source independant from Dust, that could be used by her new civilization.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Vernal. In all her canon appearances she speaks in a well-mannered way, doesn't go out of her way to insult anyone and is genuinely loyal to Raven and the Branwen tribe as a whole. Here, she swears at every conceivable opportunity and goes out of her way to antagonize everyone around her. She is still loyal to the tribe and to Raven (even thinking worse of Yang for being so weak while wearing "her" face, or disliking Qrow because he left the tribe), but she does voluntarily leave to go train with Jaune (though she still thinks herself one of them). She's little different even when the timeline catches up to the first few Volumes, a matter of months before her canon debut, implying that her being groomed for years by Raven into a decoy Spring Maiden humbled her in a way that she hasn't been while training at Jaune's gym and attending Beacon.
  • Pyrrha's father Alexander Nikos has previously been referenced or outright appeared in Coeur Al'Aran's other fics like The Unseen Hunt, but he was usually portrayed as a very loving, caring and ideal Good Parent who values Pyrrha's happiness first. The Alexander of this fic is instead a corrupt, fame-obsessed, controlling male Stage Mom who puts raking in glory before his daughters' mental wellbeing, and he's willing to bully, threaten, sue, or hypocritically use any underhanded means to get his own way.
  • Arthur Watts was already very petty and evil without any redeeming traits to speak of in canon, but in this fic, he has even fewer valorous qualities. Whereas the canon Watts was consistently and notably Defiant to the End both times that he faced almost-certain death, and he could take a harsh beating without much complaint; Watts in this fic is a bully at his core who folds and tears up under a significant physical assault, and he dies trying to toady up and then pleading for his life when he's at a vengeful Jaune's mercy.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • As of Chapter 29, Jacques Schnee becomes this after Winter returns to her role as SDC heiress, to immediate success. He smiles and expresses pride in Winter's efforts as head of security, gives her and her staff a raise, and actually apologises for being too rash over her decision to go to Atlas Academy. To cap it all off, he teases her over Jaune, tentatively supports Weiss becoming a Huntress, and pats Whitley's head. Whitley himself says that Winter deciding to remain has caused him to become a better, happier person. Fascinatingly, this trope even extends to the same work. The world that Jaune came from had a Jacques that was even worse than his canon counterpart. This also results in Jacques pulling any and all financial support from General Hawk and his supporters after the former murders Ghira Belladonna, and giving full support to Ironwood as the next General of Atlas.
  • To a small degree, Summer. In Coeur's other fics, particularly Forged Destiny, it's implied that Summer was a great huntress and was a genuinely good person... but she wasn't a great mother, always trying to go out on the next mission and saving as many people as possible at the expense of her family and her own wellbeing. After her near-death experience and rescue by Jaune, she decides to go on less missions and spend more time with said family, becoming a better mother.
  • Qrow. As a result of Summer not dying, the man drinks far less, never drinks on missions, and is altogether less surly and cynical than his canon counterpart.
• Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: In-Universe. Eventually, despite all the changes in the reset timeline including Blake's morality taking a turn for the worse, she still ends up going to Beacon Academy when she's 17. Unlike in the original timeline, this version of Blake, who's a bitter misanthrope who never defected from the White Fang and has barely been de-radicalized after its destruction, doesn't make any secret of her Faunus heritage from her school peers.
• Adaptational Sympathy:
  • Whereas canon made Raven killing the previous Spring Maiden out to be a premeditated murder intended to gain the Spring Maiden's power for herself, this fic's expansion on the details reveals that Raven actually killed the Maiden in self-defence amid a falling out where the Maiden attacked her first, and she didn't particularly want to inherit the Maiden's power due to the target it paints on her back. Furthermore, the reason this fight broke out in the first place was because Raven was horrified to learn that the previous Maiden intended to seek out Salem and deliver the power to her, and even then, Raven tried to talk the Maiden down before the latter attacked.
  • Jacques Schnee, though still a scheming slimeball, wasn't always as completely dickish and sociopathic as his canon self was portrayed as, racking up several sympathetic traits and hidden depths. In the new timeline where he eases up over time, Jacques takes responsibility for irrevocably garnering himself an ugly reputation to ensure the success of the Schnee Dust Company, and Jaune comes to suspect that a lot of canon Jacques' worst behavior might have stemmed from frustration at knowing the business he'd poured decades of his life into keeping alive would be inherited by someone more likely to ruin it after Winter had renounced her right as heir. Jacques is also revealed to be disgusted at how his company's use of Faunus cheap laborers has provided a breeding ground for racist workplace abuse against them.

• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Ozpin is portrayed far more negatively than in canon. In the show he prioritizes the safety of people above everything else, and always gives his allies the choice to follow him or not. The worst he's done there is keep important secrets from his allies out of paranoia. In this story, he is happy to sacrifice all his followers, as well as most of humanity, if that means getting rid of Salem; he's also a bonafide Control Freak on top of that. Partially a case of Outdated by Canon, as such an interpretation of Ozpin's character was more plausible before Volume 6 revealed his backstory. Accordingly, Ozpin's role in the story's setup is later treated with more sympathy and nuance, with Jaune admitting to himself in hindsight that not all of his earlier resentment was fair, now knowing what it's like to be in similar shoes.
  • Blake Belladonna is going down a darker path, in contrast to the Adaptational Heroism displayed by Adam Taurus. As a result of her father's execution in Atlas custody, this person is falling into the same murderous extremist mindset that the aforementioned adaptational hero displays in canon.
  • In canon, Sienna Khan only advocates for violence when it is deemed necessary and is furious with Adam for his actions in Vale. Here, she seems perfectly happy to launch a terrorist attack on the Vytal Festival and chastises Adam for trying not to kill too many people during his raids. At least part of this can be explained by her being the Puppet King for Hazel and Tyrian, with them encouraging the worst impulses of the group and leader.
  • Lionheart became The Mole in canon because he was a coward who genuinely believed that Salem could never be stopped, and while he got almost every Huntsman/Huntress in Mistral killed, he never got his hands dirty himself. Here, he kills Ozpin by his own hand and gives the dying man a Motive Rant that implies that he's genuinely angry with Ozpin over the way he treats his allies and that he has no regret of putting his own life above everyone else's.
  • Hazel isn't as much a revenge-obsessed hypocrite as some of Coeur's other works, but is still depicted as more villainous than he wound up in canon. He fought on Salem's side all the way up to the Final Battle of the original timeline. Canon Hazel works for Salem based on a false impression of her goals, not knowing that she actually plans to destroy the world, and turns against Salem when he finds out. Salem's corresponding Adaptational Heroism means that his impression of her goals is actually true, so he has no reason to turn against her, and Jaune doesn't attempt to, instead just killing him.
  • The original timeline version of Jacques Schnee ended up even viler than his canon counterpart. Canon Jacques became an Unwitting Pawn of Salem, only to be found out soon after, incarcerated, and ultimately murdered in his cell by Ironwood as the situation in Atlas reaches its breaking point. In this fic's backstory, it is said that Jacques not only survived, but became the warlord of an all-but-collapsed Atlas, and murdered Whitley for standing up to him.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • On the flipside to the several examples of Adaptational Badass, Ruby is badly traumatized by the attack on the Vytal Festival in Atlas. Without the motivation of her mother's death to spur her on, Ruby gives up her Huntress aspirations completely and instead seeks to become a doctor. Her family still teaches her enough to protect herself because she's been targeted before, but she's still not as good as an actual Huntress student her age, never mind a Grade Skipper.
  • Cinder never tastes the power of the Fall Maiden, not even half of it, removing most of her individual threat that allowed her to tangle with Glynda Goodwitch and kill Ozpin in the original timeline. Without it, she doesn't have the leverage to successfully recruit any criminal subordinates, so she's forced to work alone. She's not even the strongest student on her team — that would be Vernal. However, later Jaune gifts her the power of the Summer Maiden for lack of better options, putting her on a similar tier as her original counterpart.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Being adopted by Jaune Ashari at a young age before Cinder ever found her, Emerald's last name in the new timeline is Ashari instead of Sustrai.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: Jaune takes in Emerald early on, despite being roughly only 12 years older than her. This leads to Sink or Swim Fatherhood as Jaune has no idea how to raise Emerald. This is further complicated by their mutual social incompetence leading to one heck of a New Parent Nomenclature Problem.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head:
  • Jaune develops a tendency to ruffle Emerald's hair. Considering her initial fears of being beaten or sexually abused by this strange man, allowing these small gestures of affection is a pretty big show of trust in him.
  • She later makes a point to stand close to him in a stressful time because he seems to like doing it, and even ruffles his hair when he seems worried. She doesn't understand why Winter and Jaune seem to find this funny though.
  • Whenever Yang tries to make smart-mouthed comments to Qrow, he loves putting her in a headlock and noogieing her.
• Age-Gap Algebra: Winter bemoans that being about 10 years younger than her crush is indeed a lot when "that's also two-thirds of her life". She tries to reassure herself that said percentage gets smaller the older they get, to no much avail because it'd still take a lot more time for their theoretical relationship to overcome the creepiness factor (9 years, if you're curious). Later on her father comments on that very same Age-Gap Algebra and states he finds it acceptable once Winter becomes of age in three more years to her great surprise and (rather hopeful) mortification.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Lionheart begs for his life when Watts and Tyrian turn on him. Tyrian simply knocks him unconscious then happily hands him over to Jaune.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Though not quite on the same level as the other two examples, Hazel's death is still quite a somber affair. In his final moments, he uses his last breaths to express respect towards Jaune, and he wonders hopefully if he'll be reunited with his sister in death. Hazel dies with a smile on his face, and Ozpin thinks that he's never before seen anyone look so happy to meet their death – which, coming from Ozpin, is really saying something.
  • Jaune does his best to comfort Omaira in her final moments, in spite of all the crimes she committed in both timelines. He gently assures her that she became a monster through no real fault of her own, and that her parents will forgive her when they meet in the afterlife.
  • The way Jaune sees it, it costs him nothing to make it clear to Salem that, whatever she's done in the millennia since, she did not deserve to be treated the way she was by the Gods for the "crime" of not being able to deal with her grief in a healthy way. Salem pays back that sympathy by giving him an extra two months of life before he'll vanish.
• The Alcoholic:
  • Averted (or at least downplayed) in the case of Qrow. While he still drinks too much, he's much more restrained than his canon self thanks to never experiencing the grief of Summer's death, and he never drinks on a mission. Jaune even notices that his trademark flask is securely strapped down and not easily available for consumption when they first meet.
  • Played straight (though not seen onscreen) with Weiss, Winter, and Whitley's mother, Willow.
• Already Done for You: After Jaune lets James Ironwood into his group, Ironwood immediately starts worrying about the Relic of Knowledge (since that's the one the Leo was sitting on for years) only for Jaune to tell him that he disarmed it two years prior and an ally of his (Raven) is already stealing it that night.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: Jaune takes the surname "Ashari" after traveling back in time, partly in honor of the Del'Ashari tribe who took him in for a while, and partly to avoid anyone connecting the dots between him and his younger self. Many chapters later, he learns that the Del'Ashari are the last remnants of Ozma and Salem's kingdom, and by taking that name he's been wearing a big neon "I'm relevant to your interests" sign in both their eyes for years.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • Junior's opinion of Jaune after he killed several of King's top men in a deal gone bad. This relationship gains shades of an Odd Friendship over time.
  One thing was for certain, Junior knew how he was going to handle Ashari. Politely. Very fucking politely...
  • Emerald is the top student at the ASH Gym, and is quite smug and proud of it... until Vernal comes along and almost effortlessly curb stomps everyone else but the teachers.
  • Hazel is immensely powerful and skilled, but even he's forced away when Spring Maiden Raven Branwen shows up to save Jaune.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's not clear whether Amber's Face–Heel Turn is due to resentment over Ozpin putting her in a Gilded Cage or legitimately believing that there is no way to beat Salem and joining her out of fear like Lionheart did.
  • On multiple occasions, Tyrian allows himself to be hurt so that he can get a hit on his opponent. It's left ambiguous whether he's thinking tactically or if he's just so insane that he either doesn't care or likes it.
  • A question is raised a few times: why didn't Raven help Summer on the fateful day of her near-death? Raven can sense when one of her bonds is in danger, clearly cares for Summer despite her efforts to leave that chapter of her life behind, and Summer claims she hadn't used up her 'one save' yet. When Summer demands an answer, Raven is noticeably shaken and can only sputter that she "was busy", but the argument is interrupted before she can elaborate.
  • The Beacon staff are unable to figure out how Lionheart died in his prison cell - his hands were tied behind his back and there were no tools at his disposal to kill himself. The fact that his heart gave out makes them think he was poisoned, but no one was able to get in the cell and they shoot down the possibility he managed to poison himself. A later revelation about how Salem keeps control of her minions offers a possible explanation (see Magically-Binding Contract below), but not confirmation.
  • In a few different points, Jaune wonders what happened to Mercury Black. Since he never learned his backstory, he has no way of knowing where he was before Beacon, meaning that Jaune has no way to find him even if he wanted to - plus, completely by accident, he also ensures that the two people who did find him, Cinder and Emerald, never seek him out at any point. Jaune concludes that he'll probably never know what happened to him, not that he particularly cares.
• Amicable Exes: Apparently, Jaune actually did manage to get together with his first crush Weiss, eventually. But the relationship was kind of doomed from the start, because it was something she felt she owed him on some level for saving her life. In better circumstances they might have been able to get past that poor foundation, but the escalating war with Salem and ongoing collapse of civilization wasn't good for cultivating romantic chemistry. They parted as friends with a promise to try again once the conflict had passed... not that they got the chance.
• Ancient Conspiracy: Teased in the summary, and later on in-story with some ancient ruins that interact in interesting ways to Jaune's mysterious new tattoo.
• And the Adventure Continues: After creating a much better timeline with ten years of hardships, Jaune is plucked right back to where and when he left - the burning tower with Salem's dead body in the Bad Future. Realizing that it's now his responsibility to repair the original timeline once more, Jaune manages to barely save Ruby's life before setting out to do exactly that, no longer abandoning the world he once tried to save. Additionally, the final author's note confirms that this version of Jaune will appear in Arc Royale, so this is not the last we've seen of Jaune Ashari.
• Anti-Climax: The conclusion to the fight between Jaune and Hazel in chapter 68. Despite being built up over the last few chapters as the fight where Jaune finally stops holding back he not only still doesn't use his full semblance, the fight itself ends up being very short and in the end both opponents survive due to a Diabolus ex Machina knocking Jaune out forcing him to be saved by Raven who decides to let a tired and injured Hazel escape.
• Anti-Villain:
  • While still a member of the White Fang, Adam Taurus refuses to harm children or other non-combatants, including prisoners, and going by his comments to Sienna, insists on honoring any deals he makes.
  • Roman is still a criminal and proud of it, but he also doesn't hurt kids and is willing to help make sure that the White Fang (and their backers) don't get a hold on Vale. He still insists on pay and the opportunity to pull off Heists.
• Anything but That!: Played for Laughs. Jaune's silent reaction when Junior asks him to train the Malachite twins in his Huntsman prep-school.
• Apocalypse How: In the Bad Future, Remnant has suffered at least a Class 1 if not a Class 2. Huntsmen as a global organization have collapsed with all four academies having fallen, and the Kingdoms of Vale, Mistral, Vacuo and Atlas have either collapsed into anarchy or been lost to the Grimm and bandits. Apart from Salem's forces before her downfall, only the SDC seems to still stand as a major organized power, having overthrown the Atlesian government and now ruling over what remains of Atlas-Mantle.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Ren denies that fairies or magic exist and chalks up Raven's numerous abilities and impossible knowledge to an extremely convoluted Semblance, but admits he's in denial and desperately grasping at straws.
• Argument of Contradictions: Yang and Emerald thusly:
  Emerald: I think it won't matter. Jaune trained me.
  Yang: Yeah well, my dad trained me. And Uncle Qrow.
  Emerald: Pft. That loser? Jaune could take him any day.
  Yang: Uncle Qrow's not a loser! He could beat your old man!
  Emerald: No way.
  Yang: Yes way!
  Emerald: Nuh-uh.
  Yang: Yuh-uh!
  Emerald: That's not even a word.
• Armies Are Evil:
  • Ozpin takes a firm stance on this being the case, and argues often with James Ironwood, who in turn strives to Invert this perception. Jaune, having seen cities that were garrisoned lightly or only with Huntsmen be wiped out overnight in his Bad Future, tends to side with Ironwood.
  • Qrow seems to take a similar view, viewing Atlas as entirely over-militarized.
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • After Summer learns that Jaune is both (sorta) friends with Raven and knows how to kill Salem, he asks that she keep it secret. When Summer asks what he'll do if she tells Ozpin, she's shocked that Jaune immediately says he'll leave Vale rather than let Ozpin have any hold over him.
  • Likewise, when Jaune explains that Ozpin is trying to turn their children into the next Team STRQ and Summer asks if it's really a bad thing, Jaune brings up that Raven abandoned them, Summer is only alive because of pure chance, Taiyang's first marriage was broken up by said Ozpin-induced Raven Abandonment, and Qrow's been forced to choose between his friends and his team.
• Arranged Marriage: Jacques Schnee merely informs his heiress who she's supposed to marry, his fatherly instincts only going so far as to stop and explain to her why this particular liaison is good for the SDC and (badly) try to reassure her that marrying someone ten years her senior is not such a bad thing. What would've been an utterly dick move from his part, if not a solid candidate for his Moral Event Horizon in any other story or set of circumstances, is made hilarious this time around because Jacques is unwittingly setting up Winter's Perfectly Arranged Marriage to her long-time crush and mentor Jaune Ashari. And, as time goes on, it becomes a lot less 'unwitting' on Jacques' part as he even teases his daughter over her not-so-secret crush.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Defied. Yang starts showing obvious signs for this — understandable, she is 11-year-old and the best fighter she knew in her age group — so her father and stepmother see fit to sign her up for a tournament with kids as strong as her in order to keep her self-confidence from turning into hubris that could one day get her killed. Sure enough, Yang gets taken out without too much trouble by a then-debutante fighter Pyrrha Nikos.
  • Vernal knows she's the best fighter of the students at the ASH Gym by a wide margin, and is not afraid to rub everyone else's face in it. The only reason that her classmates don't try to wipe the smirk off her face is because she really is that good. Emerald speculates that she's about as good as a first year Beacon student.
• The Artful Dodger:
  • Sun, to an extent. He's lean, but he's already got the cheerful, boisterous nature from canon, and is pick-pocketing to selflessly help feed younger kids in his group. When Jaune shows him some kindness though, he does his best to repay him.
  • Inverted with Emerald, whose lack of any support from fellow street rats, as well as the added dangers of being a young girl living on the streets, led her to be a somber, cynic, and somewhat timid child.
• Asshole Victim: Cardin Winchester's father is killed when the Winchester house is burned down with him inside. Considering he was just as racist toward Faunus as his son if not more, didn't care about Cardin's bullying of other students at Beacon, tried to get Emerald expelled from Beacon altogether, and then tried to extort Jaune for over a million lien out of greed, no tears will be shed for him.
• At Least I Admit It: Watts believes that this is what makes him better than Cinder. Like her, he's a fundamentally selfish person who cares only for power and will jump ship the second it suits him. Unlike her, he makes no attempts to hide or disprove that fact and is freely willing to betray first if it'll give him an edge.
• Atomic F-Bomb: One of the Malachite Twins lets one off when she finds out that she's first up in the mini-tournament against Vernal.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: According to Raven, this strategy is what gets Huntsmen killed, focusing too much on offense and letting their Aura handle their defense.
• Awesome by Analysis: On top of fighting dirty, the ASH school also trains its students to analyze their opponents and figure out how they fight before running in blindly. When Whitley and Weiss take on Jaune, Yang and Emerald are already figuring out aspects of their weapons and combat styles by studying their weapons.
• Badass and Child Duo:
  • Jaune and Emerald after he took off the streets and all but adopted her. Upgraded to Badass And Little Miss Badass Duo later on once he started to train her.
  • Jaune teases Junior about copying him after meeting the man's young bodyguards, the Malachite twins.
    Jaune: [grins] It's not a competition, you know.
    Junior: Get the fuck out of my office, Ashari.
  • Roman and Neo are very surprised to discover that they weren't the first to come up with this combo. Which they would have done in the future had Jaune not done it first in the past. Or something.
• Badass Teacher:
  • A role Jaune ends up finding himself in fairly frequently. So far the list includes Vernal, Emerald, and Winter Schnee. He later opens the ASH Gym and becomes this for a number of others, including Sky Lark (of future Team CRDL), Yang, and Coco Adel.
  • Seeing as how they're teachers at Signal (and took over at the ASH Gym when Jaune was out with Emerald), Taiyang and Qrow count as this too.
• Bad Future: Jaune gets sent back from one. While they did defeat Salem in that timeline, the cost was extremely high. The rest of the Kingdoms have fallen to Salem's invasions, save Atlas, which is under the dictatorial control of Jacques Schnee. Literally every single major or minor character in the show, save Jacques, Salem, and Jaune are dead, including Jaune's family (and given that Salem is pinned to her throne by Crescent Rose through the heart, Salem doesn't have much longer). On the plus side, Raven lives in that timeline, by virtue of being nowhere near anything else and refusing to take part in the final battle.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • While attending a tournament on behalf of the SDC, Jaune appears to be taken hostage by an unseen assailant. After he verbally reduces the assailants' plan to dust, it turns out to be Helena Nikos.
  • After he saves Pyrrha's life, Jaune gets confronted by Alexander Nikos on Beacon's campus. After automatically assuming the man is going to be a pain as he always was, he is rather surprised when Alexander hugs him and declares him a friend of the Nikos family.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Yang gives Weiss some advice then warns her nothing is free, Weiss expects the other girl to want money or power. Yang just wants information about Weiss's brother.
• Batman Gambit: Jaune has a good grasp on the fighting styles and overall personalities of many people across Remnant. He uses this knowledge to better anticipate people in combat.
  • Played straight. He's unfazed when Tyrian suddenly attacks with his scorpion tail mid-fight. He then plays to Tyrian's bloodthirsty nature by leaving himself open to a blow to the torso, thus getting himself into position to cut off the stinger.
  • Inverted. He is too secure in his knowledge of Qrow's temperament and fighting style, and is blindsided by a much-younger Qrow's aggression. He ends up taking some unnecessary blows due to expecting a more cautious and underhanded opponent, and then doesn't follow through on several openings due to assuming them to be feints.
  • It turns out that Salem marking Jaune's hand before sending him back is one aimed towards her past self: knowing that only she could have given him the symbol but also knowing that she personally never did, means that Jaune instantly becomes one of her highest-priority targets upon his arrival.
  • Watts sabotages Jaune's Aura machine with Winter still inside because he knows he can get away with it; he's still too invaluable to Salem's services, and the worst case scenario is that Jaune attempts to kill him and gets killed by Salem.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Chapter 66 starts with one between Hazel and Jaune Ashari surrounded by the corpses of dead White Fang members. There's even explosions in the background.
• Became Their Own Antithesis:
  • Blake is a tragic case. She starts out as a Morality Pet to Adam, helping him stay as close to the straight and narrow as any operative in Sienna Khan's White Fang can hope to be. But after her father is unlawfully murdered in Atlesian custody, Blake fully commits to the White Fang's extremism and her other colleagues' overt willingness to murder, and Adam is forced to become the person holding her back from going too far.
  • Jaune considers himself a case. In his original world, he started out as a naïve, sheltered and soft boy who had no fighting skills nor experience, and was combatively outclassed by all his peers. By the time Jaune goes back in time, his experiences in the old timeline with losing Pyrrha and fighting for years as the war against Salem tore Remnant apart have made him a hardened, cunning, experienced and ruthless warrior who is a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond amidst the past's peacetime.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Jaune Arc (the one from the new timeline, not Jaune Ashari) says that he'd do anything to get strong enough to be a Hunter. He does this in front of Raven "Strength is literally the most important thing in the world" Branwen. As of chapter 45, she's brutally training him.
  • Before either of them succumbs to extremism, Adam promises Blake that he will re-make the White Fang into "something different" and that every person in Remnant will know their name. Few years later the White Fang is a terrorist organisation feared throughout the world in which Adam and Blake are both leaders carrying out attacks in its name. Adam really doesn't like this outcome.
  • When left to teach the students of the ASH Gym, Taiyang and Qrow talk to the students about the value of teamwork. The students take this to heart and turn a one on one spar into a three on three battle because both fighters had their friends ambush the other.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:\
  • Emerald to Jaune, her Adoptive Peer Parent. Also a Deconstruction because the lack of any nurturing presence in her life prior to Jaune makes her deathly afraid of either losing him or getting discarded, which manifests in her near-obsessive desire to become stronger — and thus "useful" in her own words — as fast as possible.
  • Cinder starts to legitimately respect Jaune because he offers her a good-faith partnership instead of spiteful competitive backstabbing like the rest of Salem's circle, and is willing to stand up to Salem on her behalf when Salem tortures her as a demonstration.
• Bedouin Rescue Service: Jaune winds up on the receiving end of this by the Ashari Tribe, as does Summer.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: All of Team November to varying degrees when they're put in charge of organizing security for the Vytal Festival. Jaune actually turns this in his favor by dropping his retirement from the group on them at literally the last minute when they're swamped with work, meaning that they won't have time to organize something crazy for his going-away party.
• Benevolent Boss: Jaune's criminal contacts know that he's a dangerous man to cross but also generous with those who help him. After Roman and Neo help save Emerald from Tyrian, he gives them half a million lien in thanks.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't insult Pyrrha in front of Jaune.
  • Don't insult Jaune in front of Emerald. She thinks it very difficult to keep herself from throwing a chair at Weiss when she says that Winter is better than Jaune is.
  • Emerald attending Beacon is one for Jaune. When Ozpin brings up the possibility, it's one of the few times Jaune breaks his The Stoic facade in front of the man, leaving Ozpin on the back foot and hastily changing the conversation. When Emerald brings up the possibility, he gets as close to yelling at her as he ever has (without actually yelling). He's okay with the other members of the cast attending Beacon, such as Yang, Ruby, Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora. He even encourages them to do so, but Emerald he puts his foot down on hard. It's explained that he knows that no matter what happens, Beacon will be in the crosshairs and will be attacked, but that doesn't explain why he's trying to get his other school friends to attend. In any case, it ends up not mattering because he eventually relents and lets her attend anyway.
• Better the Devil You Know: Raven uses this argument to convince Jaune to give Cinder the Summer Maiden powers. Yes, Cinder is a power hungry nutcase, and her efforts in the previous timeline led to humanity's destruction. On the other hand, this makes her incredibly predictable, it gives Jaune the means to convert her to his side, and, above all, it keeps any additional innocents out of danger from Salem's forces.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Roman notes that Jaune is far less selfish than most criminals and considerably more emotional. Both make him harder to predict, but mean that if someone can understand him, Jaune can be bargained with.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Jax Asturias and his Crown organization. He talks big, but Jaune crushes him in a matter of minutes when they actually fight.
• Big Brother Instinct: Technically he's the little brother, but after Watts takes Argus hostage and Terra has to fix the problem, Jaune recommends Ironwood give Saphron and Terra direct financial aid instead of just a medal since they're both new mothers.
• Big Damn Heroes: After being ambushed by Hazel and Blake, Jaune is about to be taken... and then the wind picks up, revealing Raven Branwen, who utterly demolishes the White Fang forces.
• Big "NO!": When Coco suggest Jaune needs to get laid, Emerald asks if she should do it, prompting Coco, Weiss, and Yang (who's in the showers) to shout "NO!" at the top of their lungs.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jaune disappears from the new timeline, tearing him away from the life he built, but Salem's last act gives him time to put his affairs in order. He will never see any of the people he's come to cherish for the rest of his days. His spirit snaps back to its source, the original Salem's tower, leaving him in exactly the same predicament that he started the story in. But all is not lost: he is informed that the original Ruby has not completely expired yet, letting him save one of his friends at the very least. He is a stronger, smarter, and wiser person from his ten year adventure, and he feels up to the task of trying to rebuild the original world, when before he gave up on it. As well, he's left his mark on the new world in the form of two biological children, and he's assured by the Gods that whatever happens, he will see his loved ones — all of them — in the afterlife.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Jaune sees the conflict between Ozpin and Salem this way, with Salem being unambiguously evil and Ozpin being a Well-Intentioned Extremist who will sacrifice anything in the name of victory. Ironically, Jaune has become a shade of grey himself due to his schemes and manipulations.
• Blatant Lies: Jaune finds out that Raven is training someone new now that Vernal is training at his gym. She tells him that the man's name is "Boris Borisson, son of Boris." Jaune even lampshades that he must have come from a "long line of Boris's." In reality, the lie was to distract Jaune Ashari from the fact that Raven is now training the Jaune Arc of this timeline.
• Blessed with Suck: While wondering about the significance of Ren and Nora that caused them to get kidnapped and his son to get wrapped up in rescuing them, Nicholas theorizes that one of them has some kind of desirable Semblance that made them a target. He recalls a case he heard about once, of someone whose Semblance was to regrow their own organs, and who was held prisoner and used as a black-market organ dispenser.
• Blinded by the Light: Jaune likes using flashbangs both for actual combat and spars. A later chapter implies everyone on Team November does, with Foxtrot even calling it the "Team November Surprise" when she uses it to train up Pyrrha. They're eventually seen as a hallmark of the ASH Gym.
• Blind Obedience: Much like it happened to Emerald with Cinder in canon, Jaune taking her off the streets and becoming her parental figure of sorts made the girl consider right and wrong in terms of how it benefits or is detrimental to his cause. It doesn't matter whether he's a Atlas Specialist or working with criminals, Emerald will follow him regardless.
• Blood Knight:
  • Multiple children in the work, such as Yang, Emerald or Pyrrha, find fighting against their peers quite enjoyable. At one point during the Mistral Tournament, Pyrrha injures herself purely to make the fight against Yang more challenging.
  • Tyrian is possibly more obsessed with fighting than in canon. In particular, he relishes the though of seriously fighting against Jaune, to the point where he doesn't care whether or not he would end up dying in such a battle — it would be all worth it to him.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: A young Ruby gets covered in blood when Jaune eviscerates a White Fang operative in front of her to save her and Emerald's lives. It's later revealed that the event traumatized Ruby badly, causing her to lose any interest in becoming a huntress when she grows up.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Emerald's moral compass can best be summed up as "What is good for Jaune," and "What is bad for Jaune."
• Both Sides Have a Point:
  • Summer asks what Jaune is planning on telling Winter in chapter 45 about his response to her kissing him and him not being willing to reciprocate. He tells Summer he was planning to lie to Winter. Summer immediately calls him out on it, since that's a rude and cruel thing to do. Jaune fires back that if he told her the truth, Winter would most likely throw herself into danger to fight the ones separating them and likely get herself killed, or ignore his excuse and pursue him anyway, which would put her at risk from Salem's forces. He even rationalizes that being lied to is preferable to death or capture by Salem, even if it is distasteful. Summer has no real response to that.
  • Summer's argument that Cinder could be redeemed if Jaune tried. Summer is correct that this Cinder hasn't committed a large amount of the crimes that the original Cinder did, so he shouldn't judge her yet, and that there's no indication that she couldn't come around to their side if he tried. Jaune retorts that it's not exactly easy to not judge the woman who, in the previous timeline, gouged out Ruby's eyes.
  • In two separate arguments, Ozpin and Raven both explain their opinions on Jaune and his methods, and both of them bring up valid points. Ozpin argues that they're no different, as both of them are willing to lie and take brutal steps to do what's right for the world, making them come off as cold to others. Raven, on the other hand, believes they're Not So Similar, as Ozpin often pawns the work off to his allies instead of doing it himself like Jaune does and the fact that Jaune was willing to throw everything away for another chance at killing Salem proves that he's unwilling to accept an imperfect victory like Ozpin is. After he hears both of their opinions, Jaune admits that he's not quite sure how to feel.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Taiyang and Qrow, while hanging out with Jaune, mention that their weapons are ready for the day some poor fool decides to ask out Ruby or Yang. Jaune thinks to himself that he'd be fine with a boy asking Emerald out, unless it happened to be Mercury, in which case all bets were off.
• Broad Strokes: As both canon RWBY and Relic move forward, later scenes from canon are mentioned to have happened in the original timeline of Relic. The issue is that the later direction of RWBY's plot increasingly contradicts the stated conclusion that sets up Relic, and it will surely deviate further as RWBY itself approaches its end. It's safe to say that the original timeline in Relic is not the same as the canon timeline, but instead one where many of the same events occurred but not all, and not always in the same way. For example, in Chapter 150 Jaune and Ironwood discuss the events of Volume 8, but that Volume ended with Atlas and Mantle destroyed and Jacques Schnee dead, while Relic has established that Atlas was one of the only places that mostly survived to the end, and Jacques had taken control of what was left of the kingdom. Unlike some instances of earlier conjecture being quietly retconned to match later canon, this fic's description of the state of Atlas stays the same all the way up 'til the final chapter.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • While not fully broken, there are signs that there are cracks forming in Team STRQ's opinion of Ozpin. While Raven made her opinion of the man clear a while ago, the rest of the team still looked up to Ozpin, until Summer sat in on a meeting between Ozpin and Jaune, and saw Ozpin practically interrogating the man over a slipup. The remaining group's confidence was further shaken when Ozpin began hinting that Ruby and Yang would become the core of a replacement group for their own, specifically, when Ozpin tries to recruit Yang to Beacon two years early over Summer and Taiyang's objections, or his continuing attempts to recruit Ruby, who doesn't want to be a Huntress at all. This despite that all remaining members of STRQ have made it clear on multiple occasions to Ozpin that they don't want to involve Ruby and Yang in the fight against Salem, and that Ruby doesn't want to be a huntress.
  • Young Jaune loses his respect for Raven when he learns about her abandoning her family.
• Broke the Rating Scale:
  • Emerald likes to put people into neat little boxes and categorize them. The only two that she can't are Jaune, due to his being... well, himself, and Raven, who she describes as being so scary she doesn't dare put her in a category of any kind.
  • She does it again when discussing "The Pecking Order," with Weiss and Whitley, placing Vernal below the Grimm. (Winter starts above the Grimm, but when they remind her that she kissed Jaune she goes below the Grimm, though above Vernal).
• Brought Down to Normal: Once Salem is dead, everything fuelled by her magic fades away. While she temporarily stablilizes Jaune's body with her last act, her mark on his hand is gone, taking with it his magical abilities.
• Brutal Honesty: When Jaune decides to take Cinder on a mission to Mistral, Vernal starts begging him to tell her why she's not being taken instead. When she finally asks "what can she do that I can't", he responds "die", before explaining that he's taking her because her life is completely expendable.
• Bullying a Dragon: Alexander Nikos tries to slap his eldest daughter when she disagrees with him. While he might have been a tournament fighter, she was a specialist in the Atlas military and catches his wrist easily.
  • His treatment of Jaune may also count as he is unaware of his true combat prowess or his many high-placed and dangerous connections.
• But Now I Must Go: After Salem's death, Cinder has no reason to continue doing any of the things she's spent her life since childhood doing. She is no longer accountable to an immortal master, is now one of the most powerful people on the planet, and doesn't even technically have a criminal record since she was never exposed to the authorities. As such, she declines to return to her team at Beacon and instead stays in Atlas to pursue her own destiny, whatever that may be.
• Bystander Syndrome: Several people see Tyrian Callows following Emerald and Yang but ignore it despite wanted posters bearing his face being everywhere in Vale.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Emerald takes advantage of the fact Tyrian needs her as bait against Jaune to make him release her and Summer by stabbing herself in the stomach, citing that he'll need Summer to take Emerald to the hospital.
• Can't Live Without You: The nature of what exactly Jaune is is questioned a few times, and the answer is ultimately confirmed to be a magic construct connected to Salem's magic to sustain itself, first briefly the original dying Salem and then the living Salem at his destination timeline. What this means is that if Salem is killed, the magic will have no source to pull from and fade away, and so will he. Jaune learns this from the Relic of Choice, and goes through with it regardless.
• The Champion: Played with.
  • Jaune and Qrow's first meeting ends with Qrow assuming Jaune to be a bandit under Raven's command, and maybe a bit more. She ends up invoking this trope by name in order to deflect attention from herself, which Jaune reluctantly plays along with because he owed her at the time.
  • Emerald's current life goal is to gain strength and become this for Jaune. She doesn't really care whether that means being a Huntress, a criminal, or something else entirely, she just wants to grow stronger and help him.
• Chaste Hero: Emerald has elements of this. To be fair, she is not well mentally. She's gotten much better, but it hasn't been that long since she was adopted and has no idea why Whitley is acting the way he does or why Yang is teasing her about it. The fact that Jaune never gave her The Talk doesn't help matters.
• The Chessmaster: Ozpin, as per usual, with some control freak tendencies added in as well. He's a well meaning one, taking steps to try to prevent the extinction of all the people of Remnant by the Grimm, and his moves tend to be cunning. That said, his control freak tendencies mean that he often tries to get people directly under his control, and his methods work better with people who like him. Those who are on to his methods — namely Jaune and Raven — try and stay out from under his control, even if they do agree with certain motives (not letting Salem have the Maidens or the Relics, for example). Jaune, partially because he remembers that the previous timeline's Ozpin graduated into Well-Intentioned Extremist territory and that he sacrificed pretty much everyone, has good reasons to not want to submit to Ozpin's control.
  • Qrow and Jaune both know that the real reason that Ozpin wants Ruby and Yang in Beacon is not to teach the girls and leave them alone, but to prepare them for being the next generation of Team STRQ, so as to have another group ready to fight against Salem in a decade or two. None of STQ or Jaune want this, particularly since Ruby no longer wants to be a huntress.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Non-romantic example. Emerald's become rather possessive of Jaune when it comes to other girls. She dislikes Winter spending time with him and glares Ruby down when she talks to him. The only female she's not willing to press is Raven and only due to how dangerous she is. A good part of this is because she still believes the worst in people, and that Jaune will eventually stop having a use for her and abandon her.
  • Raven hints that Vernal has become this for him as well, on the basis that she sees him as someone very strong that she can learn from and that he beat her several times while with the Branwen Tribe. She wants to learn from him, hoping to become strong enough to fight Raven someday, and spends literally years trying to get to him. Sparks fly when she and Emerald meet in chapter 27.
    • Oddly enough, in the end Emerald meeting Vernal makes Emerald less of this trope, since it leads to Jaune telling Emerald that he loves her and considers her his daughter. This makes her more secure in her position with him, and is able to accept that other people want time with Jaune — they just won't have what they have.
• Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Jaune, who is Junior's partner, worked to make sure that the Ball wouldn't be attacked by his own gang, as it would be a prime target for criminals (full of unarmed rich people). Unfortunately, Roman Torchwick thought that it would be a great opportunity to get his name out there and wasn't aware that he wasn't supposed to attack the event.
  • Roman and Jaune get hit with another one in the aftermath of that event. Jaune wants to get Roman on board with his "Save the World" plan, and so has Junior tip off Roman that Henry Waters-Brown has a bunch of great, expensive stuff to steal (that being another of Jaune's aliases). Jaune wants to meet Roman there in order to talk things out peacefully. Unfortunately, Raven decides to visit him that night just before Roman and his goons arrive and a fight breaks out between the parties.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Jaune is one and makes a point of ensuring anyone he ends up teaching becomes one as well.
    Qrow: [describing Jaune] Blonde hair, blue eyes and no honour whatsoever. The guy fought like some kind of movie villain. Even chucked dirt in my eyes.
  • In the original timeline, Qrow was the one who fought dirty and taught Jaune to do the same. After Jaune uses some dirty tricks to hand him a humiliating defeat, the current Qrow starts learning to do the same.
  • This philosophy played against his student Emerald, who realized that most of what Jaune taught her can't be used in a regulated tournament fight.
  • This mindset becomes the core of Jaune's new school, much to Qrow and Taiyang's horror. While Glynda doesn't necessarily approve of the brutality that the students show, she is very pleased at their skill in creative thinking and ability to win fights.
  • When allowed a few minutes to prepare before their spar against Jaune, Weiss and Whitley spend the time summoning as many white Nevermores as possible then work together to take him down, using the Nevermores to hinder and blind him. Unfortunately for them, Jaune fights even dirtier, using a flashbang and a Human Shield.
  • Implied heavily by Helena as to be the way Team November used to operate, as she shows Pyrrha the "Team November Surprise," by dropping a flashbang at Pyrrha's feet.
• Comically Missing the Point: Young Jaune assumes Emerald wanted to be his partner because they shoved their relic towards him^note Partners are decided by the first two people to touch each relic, not realizing they were trying to hit him on instinct after colliding with him.
• Commonality Connection: Whitley and Emerald don't seem to get along initially when the two children are set up as "dates" at an event. That is, until the former catches the latter using her Semblance to subtly humiliate an annoyingly superior girl at their table. While she tries to deny this initially, his enthusiasm and interest in her petty revenge ends up making them fast friends, to Weiss' confusion.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • Jaune has become this after years of fighting Salem. It's to the point where he's unable to comprehend why watching him kill half a dozen men in as many seconds has made Junior terrified of him.
  • Emerald too as a former Street Urchin, compounded by her time with Jaune. It's bad enough that getting covered in the warm blood and viscera of the White Fang terrorist that tried to kill her and Ruby barely bothered her.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Jaune struggles between his desire to help Emerald in a tournament and to not accidentally hurt Pyrrha by having her be defeated in her first tournament. He decides to help Emerald, but his focus on this issue instead of on Emerald herself leads to it backfiring.
• Confusion Fu: Tyrian's fighting style forces Summer to fight on his terms despite how suicidal it is, such as piroutting in the middle of the fight and repeatedly slamming their weapons together, both moves no one halfway competent could consider.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • When he first gets sent back in time, Jaune finds himself in the Grimmlands, but fortunately, he's within walking distance of a (slightly beat up) fishing boat with a full tank of gas, allowing him to get to Vacuo.
  • When he's recovered by the Del'Ashari Tribe, they just happen to have taken in Summer Rose, in time for Jaune to save her life. Jaune later lampshades this when he learns who exactly he just healed. Then, later, it gets revealed that the tribe is all that remains of the very same ancient kingdom Ozma and Salem ruled, which of course Jaune didn't know about until well after he took the tribe's name as his own new last name.
  • Jaune is on the road when he finds Ren and Nora's village as it's being destroyed by the Nucklelavee, and after he passes out from killing it, is rescued by Raven Branwen.
    • Ren and Nora, after being driven from their home, just happened to be taken by Watts, since they were looking for the man who saved them.
  • Jaune gets pickpocketed (or at least attempted pickpocketed) by two child versions of people he knows (Sun Wukong and Emerald).
  • When on the road with Emerald after recovering a book from a ruin and fighting Tyrian, Jaune runs into Amber, the Fall Maiden. Though later it turns out it might not have been so coincidental — Tyrian was also there that day to recruit Amber, and possibly sent her to him.
  • Upon first arriving in Mistral to look for some people on Jaune's orders, Roman and Neo first stop to eat and a magazine Neo starts reading has information on one of their targets. Equally conveniently, the article she points to is part of an interview with Pyrrha.
• Cool Big Sis: Winter to Weiss and now a young Whitley, Yang to Ruby, and Helena Nikos (aka: Specialist Foxtrot) to Pyrrha. Played with when Winter mentors and genuinely cares for Emerald, but her often rigid demeanor and Emerald's trust issues lead them to appearing more like Sitcom Arch-Nemesis.
• Coordinated Clothes: Jaune is given a suit in the SDC colors that matches with Winter's dress very well. Everyone but him can see the implications.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Defied. Jaune is careful of using his Healing Semblance as little as possible because it's the kind of rare and too-useful power that draws unwanted attention. Unknown to him, Ozpin is in fact on the lookout for a someone with a Semblance like his... at Summer Rose's request, because she wanted to personally thank the blond, blue-eyed man with healing hands that saved her life.
• Covert Pervert: Winter Schnee of all people valiantly struggles to keep her mind out of the gutter when her father tells her about his plans of her Marriage of Convenience to the man she actually has the hots for. It doesn't work, so she fell back to knocking herself out with expensive booze.
• Cowardly Lion: Younger Jaune and, after a bizarre heart to heart with her, Raven. Young Jaune says he's a coward but he has to fight anyway because he's more terrified of losing everyone. Raven decides she's a coward too, but rather than be too cowardly to fight Salem like in the original timeline, she's too cowardly to throw everything away in order to survive like her other self had.
• Crash-Into Hello: Emerald's first meeting with Sun comes when she accidentally walks right into him.
• Create Your Own Villain: By destroying most of Salem’s influence in the new timeline, Jaune removes any of Ozpin’s motivation to stop her for good, meaning that when he goes ahead with his plan to kill her once and for all, Ozpin turns on him and attempts to kill him.
• Cruel Mercy: Discussed: in the first chapter, when Jaune believes that Salem just wants him to come closer to that she can finish him off, she retorts that if she really wanted to hurt him, nothing would hurt more than making him live in a world where everyone he cares about is already dead.
• Crushing Handshake: Jaune makes the mistake of shaking Ironwood's robotic hand when James is still rather annoyed at him for Taking the Heat and then not contacting him for months on end.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jax and Gillian's attempt to control Jaune and Qrow gets them both killed with very little effort on Jaune's part - while Qrow takes on their minions, Jaune confronts Jax himself, reverses Gillian's attempt to steal his aura by stealing hers instead, snaps his neck, and leaves her to die, all within the span of a few minutes at most.

D - H

• Daddy's Girl:
  • Emerald. Big time. It's actually deconstructed a little, as she's built up so much of her life around Jaune and his wants, needs, and desires that it's absolutely unhealthy. She is getting better, slowly, but she still cares more about her father than literally anyone else on the planet. Yang accuses her of being this, and Emerald agrees with her instantly.
  • Vernal is a Tsundere version after he adopts her as well. She essentially acts exactly like Emerald, just with more swear words. She's much more emotionally grounded though so she's not as dependent as Emerald was, but she is extremely proud of being part of Jaune's family.
• Deal with the Devil: Jaune's deal with Salem to go to the past. It's even referred to as such in the story summary.
• Dead Guy Junior: When Jaune and Winter's daughter is born months after he passes, Winter names her Jeanne after her father.
• Death by Adaptation: Almost all characters are dead in the original timeline, but the new timeline Jaune creates is a bit more selective with its cast culling.
  • Ghira Belladonna, Blake's father, gets summarily executed by an Atlesien general as a result of the White Fang's attack on the Vytal Festival held in Atlas.
  • Jax and Gillian Asturias both survive the original Before The Dawn novel, albeit with the former left in a vegetative state. Here, Jax gets killed by Jaune via Neck Snap and Gillian is left to the mercy of his no-longer brainwashed minions.
  • When Jaune and Raven confront Ozpin when he tips off Salem about their plans, it comes out that the boy called Oscar ceased to exist some time ago and only Ozma remains. By the end of the confrontation, Oscar has been killed the normal way too.
• Death Equals Redemption: After realizing she's going to die, Salem decides to do better than the Brothers did to her and rewards Jaune with an extra month or two of life through her magic, breaking the long-running cycle of pain caused by her curse.
• Death Seeker: Against all odds and expectations, even his own, Subverted by Ozma. Literally everyone is under the impression that he just wants to move on to the afterlife after Salem is defeated. But when the chips are down and he's faced with that very prospect, he surprises himself by desperately rejecting it, doing everything in his power to stop himself from dying. He feels he's more than earned at least one human lifetime without the albatross of Salem around his neck, and he'll be damned if he's dying young again without a fight.
• Decapitated Army: Justified; Jax's army is made of mind-controlled slaves and killing him breaks the brainwashing.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Inverted with Jaune and Qrow. After losing to Jaune, they develop something of a vendetta against him. Then played straight after the second time they fight. Immediately afterwards they start laughing and acting like the best of friends.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: Jaune's initial motivation for taking in Emerald is to deny Cinder such a capable and loyal minion in the future. Jaune seems confident in Nurture over Nature meaning she'll never work with Salem's forces, but her frequent acts of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior shows that his intervention hasn't made her quite "good" either.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Tyrian Callows tends to take attacks so he can counter attack his enemy. It's left ambiguous whether this is tactical genius or insanity on his part.
• Demoted to Extra: Oscar Pine. Things are going much more according to plan in this new timeline, Ozpin's network of allies is still mostly intact, and he isn't part of the main cast. He's introduced with Ozma in his head like the first time, gets brought to Beacon, and then fades into the background, only physically appearing when Ozma uses his body for conspiracy purposes. By the time of the endgame, Oscar's mind is already subsumed into Ozma.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Both Emerald and Vernal pretty much live for validation from Jaune. While Emerald's grown out of it after accepting that he considers her his daughter, Vernal's only gotten more desperate over time.
• Diabolus ex Machina: After a lot of buildup to the battle between Hazel and Jaune, which includes Raven jumping into the fray near the end, all of the combatants survive the encounter: Jaune takes too much damage and passes out, Raven ends up too weak to finish the fight, and Hazel retreats due to Can't Kill You, Still Need You. The author seemed to be aware of this and explained it in a post-chapter note^note  The author stated that thanks to RWBY's low amount of villains, the only two choices were to either kill Hazel and replace him with an OC or somehow have him survive the fight, and since Hazel apparently has a role to play in the future that an OC can't fulfill, it had to be the latter choice.
• Did Not Get the Girl: It's mentioned that early on in their Team, Qrow had a huge crush on Summer, who is now married to Taiyang. They're good friends now, but he hints occasionally that he still feels something for her (though it's rare in this timeline and it's somewhat telling that in the original timeline, he only became a full alcoholic once Summer died).
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Jaune certainly didn't expect that the sigil on his hand gives him the ability to take the Maiden's powers from Amber.
  • Ozpin, despite Jaune's misgivings, didn't anticipate that Headmaster Lionheart would betray and kill him.
  • Gillian attempts to take Jaune's Aura from him so that Jax can mind control him. What she doesn't realize is that his Semblance is Aura manipulation, and by attaching her Aura to his so that she could remove it, she has given him the means to reverse her Semblance and take her Aura instead. This mistake gets her killed rather easily.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Circumstances change, but it seems some are still not long for this new world...
  • Sienna Khan was originally usurped and killed by Adam after his extremism goes too far even for her. Here she makes the mistake of inviting the wrath of Jaune by kidnapping and threatening to murder one of his loved ones. She and most of the White Fang do not survive the night.
  • Amber the Fall Maiden was originally attacked, left in a vegetative state, then finished off by Cinder for her power. Rather than eliminating her, Salem's forces recruit her instead, and she tries to stab Jaune in the back but is killed by him in turn.
  • Double for Hazel Rainart, as both timelines kill him differently than canon. In the original timeline he died in the Final Battle, while in the new timeline Jaune kills him while he is out searching for Ozpin's reincarnation. Contrast with canon, where he finds out that he joined Salem based on a lie and dies after turning against her.
  • The fate of Arthur Watts wasn't accounted for in the original timeline, but canon shows that Cinder left him to die with the city of Atlas. Here he makes the same mistake as Sienna, but actually goes through with it (only partly failing by medical intervention), prompting Jaune to use him as the first test case in his efforts to learn how to mess with peoples' souls.
• Dirty Coward: In a very rare form of example, Raven's cowardice is deconstructed: Young Jaune actually trusts Raven more than he trusts someone like Summer because she's such a huge coward, meaning that when she feels the need to get involved in something, it's important enough for him to take seriously.
• Disappointed in You: After Emerald assaults Cardin, Jaune makes clear that he's disappointed that she "acted like a thug" rather than using more effective methods of silencing the bully.
• Discriminate and Switch: Whitley claims he has no reason to be jealous of "a person like Sun", but when Sun asks if it's because he's a faunus, Whitley remarks he hadn't even realized Sun was one; he was talking about Sun walking around half-dressed.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • Jaune to the point that Emerald actually calls him Smiling Man because he didn't drop his smile even while killing multiple goons.
    Junior: [thinking] He'd been smiling then, too, and even back when he'd been so much younger, Hei had recognized that as the smile of a predator. Not one that aimed to be vicious, but rather one that tried to pretend it was not.
  • Emerald herself is guilty of this; she barely bats an eye when Raven is on the verge of death in front of her, nor she seems too bothered when literally covered with the blood of Jaune's enemies during the White Fang attack to the Vytal Festival Tournament in Atlas.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Poor, poor Sky Lark. He has a lot of trouble combining hand-to-hand combat practice with Yang and his own hormones from being a teenager.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Birthday: Having spent the first half of her life on the streets, Emerald doesn't know when her birthday is, so she and Jaune celebrate the day they met as her birthday.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: When King orders Jaune to leave Emerald with him to be executed, he refuses, knowing that he could take everyone in the room without a problem. He gives King every opportunity to back down, outright telling him "You don't want to do this. Please reconsider."
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Jaune is surprised that Cinder lets him hold her to calm her down after he removes Salem's mark from her back, a process that's excruciating and leaves her screaming and writhing during and afterwards. The second Cinder gets herself back under control though, she irritatedly pushes away to get re-dressed and mutters about she isn't going to be swooped up like his other two "strays". He can only clarify that he did that once and the other one came to him, and confirm that what they have is a partnership and nothing more.
• Doomed Moral Victor: After Jaune meets the Ace Ops and sees that Marrow is much happier than he was in canon, he reflects that Ironwood’s new anti-discrimination measures brought on by the White Fang were successful after all, but at the cost of Sienna’s life and the life of everyone who followed her.
• Doorstopper: Relic of the Future stands at 176 chapters and over one million words, making it the longest running fanfic Coeur has written to date, surpassing Forged Destiny.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Having gone alone back in time, Jaune carries with him a lot of baggage that influences how he interacts with the people that were important to him in the world he originally came from. Mostly it involves being inexplicably kind and helpful to a bunch of seemingly unrelated kids, inexplicably guarded and evasive around seemingly respectable figures, and inexplicably hesitant to acknowledge possible good or bad in certain seemingly random people. Raven flat-out tells him that for all intents and purposes, the younger (relative to himself) versions of his former friends and enemies in the new timeline might as well be entirely separate individuals, and Jaune has to start treating them as such.
• Do with Him as You Will: Rather than kill Gillian for her schemes, Jaune decides to spare her life… and leave her at the mercy of the many victims of Jax's mind control. We don't get much description of what they do with her, but given her screams as Jaune & Qrow flee the scene that's probably for the best.
• Downer Beginning: The story begins in the aftermath of the final battle against Salem in the future, with Jaune as the Sole Survivor. He can't even go back to his family, as they're all dead, hunted by Salem and her minions, and Jacques Schnee took over Atlas, so any attempt to go back would get him branded a traitor and arrested or worse. Such a Pyrrhic Victory is the reason why he accepts a dying Salem's offer to Set Right What Once Went Wrong despite The Time Traveller's Dilemma.
• Do Wrong, Right: Jaune criticizes Emerald assaulting Cardin because it wasn't in an official spar, so she got in trouble for it, and because it won't change his mind, making it pointless. If she can find a more effective way to silence the boy, by all means.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • By the time Jaune realizes he's being reckless and decides he should try to keep the timeline as stable as possible, he's already failed on multiple counts — by saving Summer Rose, and by selling his future-tech scroll to a street vendor. Neither of these acts seemed even remotely significant to him at the time.
  • Jaune is pretty chagrined when he got wind of the rumors saying he and Winter are an item, unaware that this is very much her intention. He even thinks the reason why Winter has been avoiding his calls is that she's embarrassed that the tabloids would write that 16-year-old heiress is engaged to a guy almost ten years older.
  • In trying to stop a group of racists from hurting innocent Faunus, Jaune accidentally causes the radicalization of the White Fang several years early.
  • Ghira is the only high ranking member of the White Fang not involved in the attack on Amity yet is the only one to receive punishment for it.
  • Emerald, for a number of reasons, comes to suspect with what little she knows about Jaune's past that his original family were assholes who drove him away to a point where he felt he could never return, and thus she decides to be belligerent toward Nicholas Arc and Young Jaune when she notices they're clearly related to her father. The reader knows Emerald's theory about Jaune's relationship with his old family is incorrect, but anyone who's familiar with Nicholas' backstory in the shared mythology of Coeur Al'Aran's works (which is elaborated on in Not this time, Fate and also slightly hinted at in this fic) will also know that what Emerald suspects happened between Jaune and Nicholas' family is actually the bare bones of what happened between Nicholas and his original family.
  • When Adam claims that he wishes that he could go back and undo the bad things that have led to the White Fang becoming what it is, Kali gently reprimands him that you can't go back in time to change the past. That is literally the premise of this story.
  • Jaune says he doesn't want to draw the attention of Salem down on Winter in chapter 45. An earlier chapter has a scene where the White Fang (who are controlled by Salem) announce that they're going to capture Winter.
  • Helena tells her sister that she should find a man who is like Jaune Ashari, but not as oblivious, and take him for her own. Pyrrha's subplot of the first two seasons of RWBY was that she had fallen for the oblivious Jaune (who in the future becomes Jaune Ashari).
  • Adam refuses to even consider abandoning Blake, despite her extremist ways, as he believes that she would never leave him had he gone down a similar path. In the original timeline Blake not only left Adam after he crossed a line, but she also brought about his downfall and eventually killed him in a fight.
  • A few times Jaune muses about Emerald's original partner in crime, Mercury. For all his future knowledge, Jaune never actually learned the guy's backstory, so he has no idea the kid is living in a remote cottage getting "trained" by his abusive asshole assassin father. Jaune's actions prevent Cinder from finding two minions to kill the Fall Maiden, so she wouldn't have picked him up on the fateful day he fought and killed Marcus. It's possible he might have just died of his wounds, but regardless Jaune has no clue and no way to find out.
  • When Raven is heavily injured protecting Nora and Ren on Jaune's behalf, Qrow assumes that she must be keeping Nora around because she's the Spring Maiden. Raven rolls with it, and the story sticks. Unknown to all of them, Raven used exactly the same strategy in canon, only Vernal was the decoy that time.
  • Jaune only discovers that the Del'Ashari tribe is the remnants of Salem and Ozma's former kingdom years after taking the tribe's name as his own last name, half to honor their help and half to hide his connection to his younger self. His last name immediately catches the attention of people that he is trying to hide from, complicating things further. As a further dose of this, it's Salem who ends up informing him of this.
  • When Young Jaune describes his combat experience, Yang dismisses his claims that he was trained by his fairy godmother, unaware that he's talking about Raven, her mother.
  • When Jaune convinces Qrow that Omaira, the Summer Maiden, is not to be trusted, he mentions that they killed someone very dear to him and they died in agony. He's talking about Qrow himself in his past life.
  • Watts hates Jaune because he assumes that none of the latter's wealth, fame, or favor of Salem is truly earned, and that he never had to push himself or struggle to get where he is. He's not exactly wrong about Jaune's monetary wealth — it is a thoughtless accident that made him rich, after all — but Watts doesn't have an inkling of the struggle, suffering, and loss Jaune went through to get the opportunities he has now.
• The Dreaded: Jaune, no matter where he goes, swiftly gets a scary reputation.
  • The gangs of Vale fear him because he's a Huntsman actively interfering in their business and has shown the skill and ability to wipe out entire gangs before.
  • To a small degree, Emerald fears him for years because of his Dissonant Serenity while killing multiple people who are going to kill her.
  • To a larger degree, Ruby fears Jaune because he cuts a White Fang member in half in front of her while saving her life. Any time she's near him, she insists on standing behind someone (often Summer).
  • The White Fang refer to him as The Specialist because he fought both Tyrian and Hazel at the same time and lived. It gets after Chapter 66 where he single-handedly tears through the White Fang encampment with merciless tactics and ruthlessly kills Sienna Khan before engaging Hazel one-on-one.
• The Drifter: Jaune insists on traveling fairly often, if not constantly. Especially after his extended stay in Atlas leads to the White Fang turning militant three years early. This traveling usually leaves grateful civilians and awed children in its wake, not that he seems to notice. Eventually, he and Emerald settle down in Vale, but Jaune insists on going on trips for one reason or another.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: When Jaune gets in "one of his moods", he forgets he's dealing with teenagers who aren't even Huntsmen in training yet and puts them through exercises that leave even Vernal exhausted and everyone else too tired to move.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Beacon's professors express irritation that Vernal doesn't show them any respect. The sole exception is Professor Port who beats her in a spar once.
• Duel Boss: Tyrian tries to invoke this trope at the eleventh hour, requesting Jaune have his allies step back and let the two of them finally have their no-holds-barred battle to the death that they've both been itching for for ten years. Jaune hears him out, then tells his allies to all bum-rush him.
• Dye or Die: Downplayed from the "Die" part, but Specialist Foxtrot dyes her hair platinum-blonde to hide its true color, red, which would have been a giveaway that she's actually Helena Nikos, Pyrrha's older sister and part of the tournament-and-victory-obsessed Nikos family she's trying to get away from.
• Dysfunction Junction: Defied. Jaune has accidentally made the pre-Beacon life of several of his friends a lot less crappy than in canon, particularly their less-than-ideal family life.
  • Yang and Ruby. Jaune saves a dying Huntress's life with his Healing Semblance without realizing she is Summer Rose, preventing the loss that almost destroys Taiyang and forced Yang to pick up the slack for Ruby's sake in canon. On the flip side, the brutal way Jaune saves Ruby's life in Atlas gives her a lingering trauma she didn't have in the original timeline, and Qrow later states that Ruby no longer wishes to be a Huntress. She eventually decides to become a doctor instead.
  • Blake. Jaune unwittingly influences Adam to try and become stronger and more influential within the White Fang before he crosses the Moral Event Horizon, which allows Blake to become a more effective moral and emotional center for him that keeps him from becoming the monster he was in canon and preserving their relationship. Subverted quite nastily later on when we discover that Ghira is murdered in his prison cell by the General of the Atlesian army without being charged for anything; Ironwood, Adam and Sienna don't take the news very well, and Adam frets over how Blake will handle the news... the results of which are Blake becoming anti-human and far more willing to kill on missions, and she doesn't give up on the White Fang.
  • Weiss. During the fallout for the tragedy of the Vytal Festival Tournament in Atlas, Jaune asks Winter to remain the Schnee heiress for the time being as part of a Batman Gambit to get Jacques' support for Ironwood. This not only allows Winter to be the sole reliable older figure to her younger siblings, but also reprieves Weiss from the pressure of becoming the heiress herself and in turn train to become a Huntress with their father's blessing. Further, both she and Whitley recieve training from Winter, meaning that once they do come to Vale, they're stronger than they would have been at this point in the original timeline.
  • Pyrrha. This story posits that the Nikos family grooms their young to martial success through effective yet questionable methods and philosophies (which would explain why her canon self couldn't even confess to the guy she liked). Jaune preventing her older sister's death and her return to the Nikos family improves Pyrrha's family life by both providing a Cool Big Sis to confide in and look up to and, sadly enough, because Helena draws the brunt of their father's abuse to herself and away from Pyrrha.
  • Ren and Nora. Jaune doesn't arrive to Kuroyuri in time to save their families, but he does manage to give them some survival gear and supplies, rescue other villagers, and avenge the fallen by killing the Nucklelavee. Chapter 46 reveals that they may be in a lot of trouble, though, as after they escaped they were apparently taken in by Watts, one of Salem's minions.
  • The Schnee family in general. Due to Winter deciding to stay with the SDC (a suggestion of Jaune's), Jacques is put much more at ease since she's set to inherit the company. This makes him much more likable in general, such as him allowing Weiss to follow her dreams and not only trying to set up a Perfectly Arranged Marriage for Winter, but actually teasing her about her crush. Winter outright admits that before they had a massive falling out he was actually a good, if very busy, father and now with her return he's slowly going back to how he was.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Jaune meets a lot of people that he would have met much later in the timeline early, but special mention goes to his first class at the ASH Gym, which has Coco Adel (minigun-wielding leader of team CFVY) and Sky Lark (of Team CRDL, one of the ones who bullied Jaune in the original timeline).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first chapter has Salem claim many things about the setting's background and her history with Ozpin, all of which would be contradicted by canon months later. While a lot of canon developments are being integrated into Relic with some finagling, Salem's exposition here is never addressed and is treated as if it never happened.
  • When asked early on about his family, Jaune talks a little bit about his oldest sister. Keeping in line with Coeur's earlier fics, he says her name is Sapphire her description matches her earlier depictions. Most of the other sisters are namedropped some time later, again matching what was established in other fics. Come his mission to Argus, however, he runs into his later-revealed canon sister Saphron, who based on other later fics has replaced Sapphire as the oldest sister and that early chapter is ignored.
• Embarrassing Cover Up: In order to keep the fight and shootout that took place in his living room from his concerned elderly neighbors who were startled awake by the noise, Jaune had to play along with Raven's lie about them trashing the place by what she described as "testing the furniture." Worse, Mrs McGuiggins was a bit TOO understanding about it, given her own experiences in the matter, and gave them some sage advice about playing some loud music as cover the next time.
  • When Oobleck stops by later and sees the destruction, Jaune throws away the previous excuse and just says he was working with some Dust and had an accident. It's more transparent but less embarrassing.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Goldilocks for Jaune. Especially because it's his street name in the criminal underworld.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Raven's philosophy in training young Jaune comes down to this. She believes that huntsmen and huntresses rely on aura and semblances too much, so she wants her student to become a level of Badass Normal before empowering him with aura.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Both Qrow and Vernal are convinced Jaune and Raven are at least in a sexual relationship.
    • Taken even further when Qrow meets Young Jaune and assumes he's Older Jaune's and Raven's son.
  • Young Jaune believes Raven is not only his Fairy God Mother but from the Winter Court of Fae. While wrong, his logic is rather sound: Raven has far too many abilities to explain away as a Semblance, she never appears when others are around, she never explicitly denies the existence of magic, and they spar with wooden swords (Iron burns Fae).
  • In-Universe, because of the Strawman News Media of Mistral, Headmaster Lionheart thinks that Pyrrha has never been defeated, and thus apologizes to Jaune when Jaune tells him that Emerald fought Pyrrha. Jaune and Pyrrha have to speak up at this point and tell him that no, Emerald won that fight.
  • When first meeting him immediately after being sent back in time, Jaune gives Sun some words of encouragement, telling him he'll fall in love with a broody girl who won't be receptive at first, but she'll open up over time. Fast forward eight years, and Sun meets Emerald, who is absolutely not who Jaune meant but ostensibly fits the description, and he fixates on her just like he did Blake.
  • Jaune tells Emerald that he had a family but can't return to them any more, making her think Jaune was disinherited.
  • Because Raven risked her life to save two kids she couldn't have known, Qrow assumes that Nora is the Spring Maiden.
  • When Salem learns of Jaune's unusual power, she concludes he's from an unknown bloodline that survived the gods wiping out humanity. It also fits with why Tyrian initially finds Jaune near some old ruins from before humanity's near extinction.
• Escalating War: A rapid-fire instance Played for Drama. This is what the championship battle between Emerald and Pyrrha devolves into. Jaune's poorly-worded concern for her makes Emerald fight more aggressively than she originally intends to, prompting Pyrrha to try and capitalize on it. Emerald saw her defeat coming and comes up with an impromptu Batman Gambit based on what Jaune told her about her opponent's Swiss-Army Weapon. Pyrrha fell for it and turned Milo into a rifle, only for Emerald to blindside her with a hidden weapon feature of her own by using her chains to jam Milo's transforming mechanisms. Emerald seized the opening and Pyrrha fell back to her Semblance to simultaneously unjam her weapon and hit Emerald with her own chains, but this only pushed her to desperately counter with her Semblance too. Having no prep-time, a random memory of Emerald's Dark and Troubled Past was pushed into Pyrrha's mind and everything ended in screams.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When planning his robbery of Henry Water-Browns, Roman makes clear to his men not to touch the man's tween daughter. While part of it is due to Roman trying to build a reputation as a Gentleman Thief, he genuinely draws a line at killing children. Jaune is later able to capitalize on this standard by convincing him that the White Fang intends to use the Aura Transfer machine from canon on children in order to make them into deadly super soldiers, horrifying him and leaving him and Neo firmly on Jaune's side.
  • Hazel dislikes using Blake against Adam as the situation reminds him of his sister. Similarly, he thinks Adam would make for a better, less extreme leader of the White Fang but he supports Sienna because it serves Salem's goals better.
  • Thanks to Jaune saving him and Blake at a riot, Adam realizes that using violence to solve problems is not a good idea and makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with the White Fang's extreme methods. The second that he knows he can save Blake and walk away from the Fang completely, he does exactly that.
  • Bertilak all but names this trope when he says that while he may be a bad person, there's plenty of things that the Crown does that disgusts him and he wants out as soon as possible.
  • Similarly, while Carmine willingly works for the Crown and performs several unsavory deeds, she's still unnerved by Jax's sadism and wishes that Gillian were the only one in charge.
  • As Jacques reveals to Jaune, he only used the Faunus in his mines because they were willing to work for cheap, not out of outright racism. He didn't realize that racists would apply for the jobs to keep them in line, and he calls the people who branded the workers sick and twisted.
• Everybody Lives: One of the hallmarks of Adam's actions in the White Fang is that when he does his raids, his are the ones where the prisoners are left unharmed. Winter and Jacques are surprised to hear this, as they had previously assumed it was the exact opposite (the result of everyone else who had led a raid).
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Jaune may be a Manipulative Bastard willing to cross many moral lines, but what sets him apart from his enemies is his retainment of his humanity and morals.
    • Jaune is perfectly willing to work with criminals to achieve his goals, but when he comes across a gang of human traffickers, he kills them all without hesitation.
    • He's offended when Summer feels the need to ask him if he killed Lionheart after he'd already been arrested.
    • Cinder may be Jaune's Arch-Enemy from his original life, but even he draws the line when Salem uses her to demonstrate the torture function of her mark, leaving Cinder a sobbing mess writhing on the ground in agony. He gets in her face, grabs her hand and crushes it, demanding that she stop.
  • Pietro is incredibly excited by the idea that Aura can be used as a power source, even being willing to create an Aura donation system, but he disagrees with the notion that anyone would be forced to donate their Aura without their consent and worries of the kind of slippery slope that would create.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Watts is convinced that Jaune's plan to create an alternative energy source to Dust must have some kind of ulterior motive, even though Cinder points out to him that, if the plan succeeded, they would both make an obscene amount of money and ensure that Remnant would continue to survive after Dust becomes too scarce to mine.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Inverted. Jaune earned the same kind of Undying Loyalty that Cinder carefully induced in Emerald to serve her purposes by virtue of being a caring, if bumbling and occasionally utterly terrifying Adoptive Peer Parent. Later even Invoked in Jaune's thoughts after he shanghaied Roman into working for him.
  • Alexander Nikos to Jaune. Both men are no-nonsense combat instructors that pushed their younger female students to Take a Level in Badass by means of a borderline Training from Hell. However, whereas Jaune's objective was give his pupils the tools to help them survive in a world like Remnant, the Nikos patriarch's sole concern is to bring renown to his family name through his children's success regardless their feelings. The results speak for themselves: Winter and Emerald are thankful of Jaune for helping them to become stronger, whereas Helena Nikos is resentful of her father to the point she ran away from home and only returned to prevent him from doing the same thing with Pyrrha. Oh, and In the original timeline, both ended up dead because of him- Helena joined the Specialists to escape him and was killed by Tyrian on a mission to one of Merlot's labs (Jaune saved her and the rest of the Specialist team as part of his first mission), while his training of Pyrrha led to her being so good, yet so submissive to authority, that it led to her death at the hands of Cinder.
  • You could build a case that the opposite is also true. Jaune was a bit too good at earning his students' respect and affection. Winter ended up with a big crush on him and even agreed to remain as the Schnee heiress at his request for longer than she really wants to. Emerald's devotion to her Adoptive Peer Parent is even worse than her canonical self's for Cinder, which is saying a lot. At the very least the Nikos sisters are under no illusion that their father is a good person.
  • Neo to Emerald. Both are younger women/girls who view the world in an odd way, have unusual hair and eye colors, illusion-based Semblances, loose morals, and their methods of interacting with others are limited. In addition, both are extremely attached to an Empowered Badass Normal figure with loose morals and big goals and plans. The biggest difference between the two is that while Neo's first priority is her own interests with Roman second, Emerald puts Jaune firmly in first place and at least has some people she likes as more than just "Targets."
  • Hazel to Jaune. While both have grudges against Ozpin, with Hazel losing his sister while she was under Ozpin's command and Jaune losing everyone thanks in part to Ozpin's fight against Salem, they channeled it into radically different ways. Hazel turned to Salem to get revenge, while Jaune decided to buff the anti-Salem faction while still holding himself apart from Ozpin.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Jaune asks Raven to help him with a favor. She waffles... until Jaune mentions that he wants to do it specifically to screw with Ozpin, at which point she's all in.
  • Arthur Watts is also pettiness personified. When Jaune offers to make him a partner in their new energy system, he decides to sabotage it and attempt to kill Winter out of spite that Jaune was attempting to prove that he was "better" than him... when Jaune is attempting to recruit him for the project for his actual genius.
• Exact Words:
  • Jinn states that there are "two questions remaining in this era". Jaune, however, is not of this era, and so is not eligible to use them.
  • The Relic of Knowledge will only answer the question it is asked without providing predictions for the future, which caused some problems in the previous timeline, when Raven asked "how can I stop Salem" (answer: she can't) instead of something like "how can Salem be stopped".
  • As Watts details to Leonardo, Salem promised him power and influence as long as Leo served their interests. He served their interests - they're now under no obligation to protect him.
  • While trying to procure the assistance of Pietro Polendina, Jaune gives Ironwood a Dust crystal to give him as a down payment. When asked how much it's worth, Jaune replies that it has no price since the SDC hasn't seen it yet, so Ironwood decides to call it "priceless".
• Face Death with Dignity: After being stabbed in the back, Hazel calmly looks into Jaune's eyes and tells him that the battle was well fought before closing his eyes so Jaune can decapitate him. Jaune reciprocates by telling him that he was always the best of Salem's forces.
• Face Doodling: Vernal's first experience with wine results in her passing out drunk. In a moment of uncharateristic immaturity, Jaune immediately takes the opportunity to draw dicks on her face and rope Emerald into it.
• Face–Heel Turn: At some point in the past, Amber joins Salem's forces, half due to her fear of Salem and the other for Ozpin confining her to Vale for not serving him.
• Fake Assassination: Jaune executes this on Pyrrha on Chapter 95 whilst wearing a fully robed disguise to conceal his identity in order to both rile up the security forces to better protect her and provide a valid reason to move her from Haven to Beacon Academy in order to get her away from Salem's spy Leonardo Lionheart who is activately helping her subtlely to permanently remove potentially-troubling Huntsmen/Huntresses, and also to prevent him being able to deliver the new "Fall Maiden" to Salem on a silver platter. While it had some trouble in the act of faking the shots due to Helena interfering, the faked stunt was still executed successfully, the ripple effect occurred and word got out that an unknown assassin was after Pyrrha's life in the news headlines shortly afterward.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: Jaune, in an attempt to explain what the White Fang would want with Beacon (but unwilling to mention things like Maidens, Salem, and the Relics), borrows one from canon in the form of the Aura Transfer Machine. It's described as a way to siphon people's aura and semblances into one another. The criminals come to the conclusion that it would be used by the Fang to make unbeatable super soldiers.
• False Flag Operation
  • Pyrrha is kidnapped and held by goons wearing White Fang uniforms, years after the organization was rendered defunct by Jaune and Winter. None of the goons are even faunus, so it's a clear attempt to give off a false motive for the crime while obfuscating their real one: to capture the new Fall Maiden and get Jaune's attention.
  • After making contact with Salem, Jaune begins pretending to agree with her ideology in order to lure Cinder closer to him and get Salem to give him more information.
  • Jaune gets Watts out of Atlas custody without incriminating himself by having Raven in disguise stage an attack on his prison transport, pointedly showing off her Maiden powers. Since the Fall, Winter, and (decoy) Spring Maidens are accounted for, Ironwood pins the attack on an apparent new Summer Maiden that was quickly found by Salem after the last one's death, keeping suspicion off Jaune and Raven.
  • When Emerald and Vernal team up in an attempt to get Oscar punished, Emerald informs Summer of Oscar trying to pressure Ruby into being trained and then has Vernal pretend to be him while she uses her Semblance to fill in the rest. In the process, they notice that Summer calls him Ozpin; when Emerald then has Oscar act and sound like Ozpin and Summer treats it like normal, they realize they've stumbled onto something major.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • In the first chapter, when Jaune accuses Salem of trying to draw him close to kill him, Salem points out that if she wanted to hurt him she can't do any better than leaving him alive in a war torn world where all his friends and family are dead.
  • After Jaune interrogates Leonardo, he decides against following through with Ozpin's threat, that he would avenge the headmaster's death, at the hands of his old ally. Instead, he choices a much more crueler fate for him:
    Jaune: I'm going to do worse than kill you, Lionheart. I'm going to let you live. I'm going to let you live so that you can see the disappointed look on Ozpin's face, and maybe even so you can watch Salem fall and know you gave up too early, that you fed innocent people to that monster when you could have fought. That will be the punishment I lay on you.
• Fights Like a Normal:
  • Winter's conclusion when she finds out about Jaune having a healing Semblance. Justified in that most Semblances are, by their very nature, combat-related, and her Hero Worship of him led her to believe that he was just not using his Semblance in their training spars. She quickly decides his overall skill, despite lacking a flashy Semblance like hers, just proves his competence.
  • Raven teaches younger Jaune to fight without first unlocking his Aura so that once his Aura is unlocked, it will be just another tool in his arsenal rather than a crutch.
  • Pyrrha fights without using her Semblance because she enjoys the challenge of a good fight and doesn't like that her Semblance would cause her to win every fight with ease.
• First-Episode Twist: Jaune gets sent back around 13 years, a whole decade or so before entering Beacon, and a far cry from his initial hopes of a few months or years before the final battle.
• First Love: Pyrrha to Jaune. It felt really awkward for him to run into her when she was only 11 years old.
• First Period Panic: According to Jaune, when Emerald first entered a period, she calmly explained that she was dying. Jaune himself wasn't immediately sure what was happening and spent several minutes panicking and checking his daughter for wounds.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: After Watts is taken by a Maiden, Jaune and Ironwood come to two conclusions: that this must have been the new Summer Maiden, and that Salem must have gotten her hands on the new one before they could. The glaring issue with this theory is that we the audience already know that the Summer Maiden is currently Cinder, which fact Jaune knows full well and Salem does not, meaning that the next section revealing that it was Raven, working with Jaune to get Watts at their mercy comes as no surprise.
• Foil: Sun and Emerald. Both are Street Urchins that got by pickpocketing the unsuspecting, but whereas Sun was a Satisfied Street Rat and part of a gang in Vacuo where the big kids take care of the small ones, Emerald had to survive alone in Vale and her experiences, both personal and that of others like her, made her extremely cynical and disillusioned of people, on top of displaying numerous signs of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
• Foregone Conclusion: Jaune mentally notes, when facing Cyborg Grimm (a result of Mountain Glenn experiments), that they had never had to face these in the future, meaning that ultimately nothing would come of them.
• For Want Of A Nail: A constant source of concern for Jaune, as even his smallest interactions with the past has the potential to change the future in ways he can't predict. Eventually he learns to accept this as a unavoidable fact of his life and be content with doing his best to make a better future despite how his foreknowledge becomes increasingly useless.
  • One such example is him selling a scroll to a technologically adept merchant, happening literally the first day he finds civilization after coming back in time. His scroll is from twelve years in the future, and he finds later that the man used the tech to start his own communications company, Jaune's on the board of directors, and he's a millionaire.
  • Without Summer Rose's death, Ruby doesn't have the motivation to live up to her example that she did in canon. As such, she doesn't see being a Huntress as something to eagerly grab onto, but just something that the family does. Thanks to the lessened motivation and the trauma she receives at the Vytal Festival, by chapter 43 she no longer wishes to become a huntress and eventually states her desire to become a doctor.
    • Raven lampshades this trope as a reason as to why he should stop treating everyone like their canon counterparts.
  • Several people enroll in Beacon who wouldn't have in canon, including Sun, Whitley, Melanie, Miltia, and Neo.
  • Because of Lionheart's treachery and Oscar's lack of current news updates, when Ozpin jumps into Oscar's body the two begin to head to Vale instead of Mistral as they did in the previous timeline.
  • Mercury Black is never found or taken from his abusive father since Jaune's actions ensure Cinder doesn't need to find him, leaving his ultimate fate unknown.
• Freudian Slip:
  • Over time, Emerald starts mentally almost referring to Jaune as "dad" or "father", but she always catches herself before she can complete the wording. It gets more frequent after she realizes that he's keeping her around because she is loved and not because she's a useful instrument.
  • In Chapter 101, when Jaune and Summer are about to charge into battle side-by-side and are exchanging some banter, Jaune slips and calls Summer "Ruby" without realizing it. Summer, suspicious about his origins, does not correct him.
• Friends with Benefits: What the Branwen Tribe and Qrow think Raven and Jaune are, but ultimately averted as the most Raven does is crash on Jaune's couch or guest bedroom and steal his beer. Raven lets the lie continue because she thinks it's a good cover that doesn't get people asking too many questions. Also, she finds it funny.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: After leaving the Specialists, Jaune takes up a new persona as Junior's new enforcer.
• From the Mouths of Babes: Yang knows quite the glossary for an 11-year-old.
  Yang: Is this about a girl? Mr Ashari, did you cuck my Uncle Qrow?
  Jaune: [chokes on air] W-What!?
  Qrow: Hell no!
  Taiyang: Yang! Where did you even hear that term?
  Yang: Uh. Signal? It's a school, Dad. People talk. I've heard way worse than that.
  Taiyang: You better not say that around your mother. Or your sister!
  Yang: Duh. Like I'd be that dumb.
• Future Badass: Jaune himself is one having grown significantly more skilled, confident, and reliable in the war against Salem. Problem is, he's also carrying a vast array of psychological scars and several Berserk Buttons, he's socially awkward for his age due to devoting most of his young adult life to combat, and inured to violence to the point of crapping-your-pants Dissonant Serenity.
• Future Me Scares Me: Once she learns of the Bad Future Jaune came from, Raven is disgusted with her future self who didn't even bother showing up to the Final Battle which her daughter and brother died in.
  • When Ironwood learns of what he did in Volumes 7 and 8 he’s horrified.
• Genius Bonus: Those who are familiar with Fae mythology will know that Young Jaune's claim of Raven being from the Winter Court of the Fae actually has some solid logic behind it - she has very clear supernatural powers that include flight, she never appears whenever anyone else is around, and, since iron burns the Fae, they spar with wooden swords.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Some of the West City Boyz, a gang of low level drug dealers, are obvious drug addicts, likely roped into the gang by their addiction.
• Gilded Cage: Amber (the Fall Maiden) quickly tries to change the subject when Jaune asks if she's ever traveled outside of Vale, leading Jaune to speculate that she's free to go all around Vale all she wants, but Ozpin is probably watching all the entrances and exits to the nation in case she tries to go abroad. With Qrow as one of the few contacts in her scroll, he furthers the thought by thinking that Qrow was probably sent out to turn her back and keep her in Vale a few times. Amber came to despise that control enough that when faced with staying with Ozpin or joining Salem, she chose Salem.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • Ozpin comments to Qrow that the gangs of Vale have their ways and means of handling disputes, and that there's no way this current conflict will escalate. Cut to Jaune telling Junior that they need to escalate the gang war.
  • After Ironwood warns him that pretending to be with Salem is dangerous and that Ozpin won't react well to the truth, Jaune tells him that he intends to tell Ozpin "with great tact and subtlety". It immediately cuts to Jaune slamming his hand on Ozpin's desk and immediately blurting out everything he's planning.
• Giver of Lame Names:
  • Hei "Junior". His gang is the Red Axe Gang and his nightclub is "The Club". After learning his street name is Goldilocks, Jaune admits he shouldn't have let Junior choose it for him.
  • Raven, although as pointed out in Coeur's other story White Sheep (RWBY), that's not too surprising. When asked what her new apprentice's name is, she gives the name "Boris Borisson, Son of Boris." Subverted in that she deliberately chose a silly name to get Jaune Ashari to not dig deeper on the true identity of her student, the local version of Jaune Arc.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Jaune pawned off his Scroll in Vacuo a little after arriving to the past in order to cover his travel expenses. He didn't think too much of it because he figured that the salesman would never be able to do much with the device despite his promises to reverse-engineer it and because it wasn't until later Jaune realized he was roughly a decade in the past. Double Subverted four years later in-story, when Jaune discovered that Rashem actually managed to pull through and is now the CEO of one of the biggest technology companies in Remnant.
• A God Am I:
  • According to Salem in the first chapter/prologue, the Gods of Light and Darkness had left Remnant long before Ozpin was born and she is the god who cursed him with immortality.
  • Jaune speaks from experience regarding Omaira, relaying to Qrow that suddenly being given the powers of the Summer Maiden, accidentally killing her family with it, and never being directly contacted by Ozpin (which would explain what happened to her) means that her ego has swelled to the point that she believes she's blessed by Vacuo's regional gods and has become more than human. Jaune notes in his thoughts that it wouldn't surprise him if she genuinely thinks she is some kind of demigod.
  • Watts believes that he's become "akin to a God" when he takes over Argus and holds it hostage. Jaune swiftly corrects him with a punch to the jaw and a pair of handcuffs.
• God Guise: When Raven shows up during the battle with Summer Maiden Omaira, brandishing her own Maiden powers, Omaira immediately lets her guard down. Out of ignorance and immaturity, Omaira believes that her "real" parents were some of Vacuo's folk gods, and seeing Raven wielding similar powers assumes that she is the Goddess of Storms, and that her "mother" has finally come to bring her to the gods' domain where she belongs. Raven corrects her with a sword through the torso.
• God Test: Unlike Raven, who had Jaune's memories jammed into her head, and Winter, who is in love with him and believed him immediately, Summer refuses to accept that Jaune is a time traveller without concrete proof. Since Ozpin has just died, Jaune's idea of proof is to find Oscar and see if he still receives Ozpin's spirit as he did originally.
• Godzilla Threshold: Ozpin is so desperate to stop Jaune and his allies from forcing a final battle with Salem, a battle he is convinced they will lose and hand her the Relics in the process, that he instantly subsumes the identity of the unfortunate young boy he reincarnated into after being killed as Oscar, treks to Atlas partly on foot, smuggles himself to the Schnee family compound, murders the guards after gaining entry, and holds the entire family (including still-comatose Winter) hostage, threatening their lives if Jaune does not stand down. He acknowledges that his victims are innocent and what he is doing is reprehensible, but he sees no other options to avert the end of the world.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Taiyang teaches Jaune's students the value of teamwork. They promptly combine it with Jaune's Combat Pragmatist teachings, resulting in a one-on-one spar turning into a three-on-three melee because both fighters had planned to have their teammates ambush their opponent.
  • When Jaune first met Vernal, she looked down on him so he beat her in a fight. This prevented her from treating him like dirt and stopped her from annoying him that way. The problem is that now, she thinks he's incredibly strong and demands he be her mentor, even crossing entire continents to get his training.
  • This is Taiyang and Qrow's opinion on how Jaune teaches his students. It's one thing, in their minds, to teach them to fight dirty. It's another when they take that to every aspect of fighting, and suggest such combat moves as "Tactical Airstrike" as a way to defeat a stronger opponent.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Gillian's supposed death, at the hands of a mob of former mind controlled victims, is not given any detail and happens mostly after Qrow & Jaune have fled the scene.
• Graceful Loser: Yang took her defeat at Pyrrha's hands in her first tournament a lot better than Taiyang and Summer were expecting to. It helped that Emerald, someone that Yang knows she can win against, defeated Pyrrha in the finals, which the 11-year-old girl saw as a sign that she probably wasn't that much below the redhead's level. Summer silently guessed that Yang losing to Emerald would have been an entirely different story.
• Grade Skipper: In chapter 46, Ozpin makes this offer to Yang (who is at the time 15 years old), similar to the offer he made to Ruby in the previous timeline at that age, under the reasoning that Yang is genuinely as good as a first year at Beacon. This offer is soundly rejected by both Taiyang and Summer, who manage to convince Yang to avoid it because she has friends she wants to go to Beacon with, and if she left now, they wouldn't be classmates.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Daddy's Girl version. While pretty much indifferent to anything and anyone else, the one sure-fire way to set Emerald off is for a kid around her age to take Jaune's attention and praise away from her. This is why she never really got along with Winter and why she pulled all the stops to defeat an 11-year-old Pyrrha Nikos in combat.
  • Chapter 45 reveals that Vernal has this bad for Jaune and really doesn't like Emerald, as she feels that when Jaune left the tribe, he should have taken her and made Vernal his adopted daughter instead of Emerald, as he was the first person to take her seriously and act as a mentor to her.
• Groin Attack: Part and parcel of the tactics taught at ASH Gym. Qrow gets upset that Yang tries this on him three separate times in one fight.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: Adam's new philosophy as inspired by Jaune at a White Fang rally. He believes that if he gets strong enough, if those with him are strong enough, then the mere threat of violence will be enough to see change happen without needing to resort to actual violence.
• A Handful for an Eye: The first time they fight, Jaune throws dirt into Qrow's eyes to blind him. The next time, Qrow crushes one of his Dust rounds to throw into Jaune's eyes.
• Happily Adopted: Jaune treats Emerald as his daughter and does his best to be a good father. It takes quite a bit of struggle, but he eventually gets Emerald to see him as her parent and be happy living with him.
  • Averted with Vernal, who wanted to be this with Jaune but feels that Emerald took her spot.
• Happiness in Slavery: Horrifically, that is how Emerald sees her relationship with Jaune for the first few years. She thinks of herself as Jaune's property and a weapon, but is fine with that as long as her "owner" keeps feeding her and she fears being disposed of. It takes Jaune directly telling her that he thinks of her as his daughter for Emerald to stop perceiving things this way. Even then it still takes a little while for her to start returning his feelings and openly calling him "Dad," as initially, the most she could process of it was "I'm important to him, so no one can split us up." What drives the nail home was him telling her that he couldn't take her to Menagerie.
• Harmless Villain: When meeting a group of the West City Boyz gang, Jaune notes that all of them have strapped their weapons to the wrong side (unless all of them are left handed) with one even having his strapped to his boot. Even worse, some came to the meeting high, making them even more useless in a fight.
• Has a Type: It's not lost on anyone that Raven is unusually close with two (not-so-)separate people who are blond with blue eyes, just like Taiyang. It's ambiguous whether it's actually the case since she's made no move towards Jaune beyond some teasing, but everybody assumes it at some point. For what it's worth, there was one time she mistook him for Tai while in a half-awake haze and begged him to come back to bed... Jaune and Qrow ultimately come to the conclusion that she does love him (in no small part to his ticking the same boxes as Tai), but waited too long to make her move and lost her chance to do anything with him. That is, until Winter allows her one night to join them in the bedroom.
• Hate at First Sight:
  • Winter and Emerald. Gets worse as Winter starts spending more time with Jaune and Emerald begins to fear being replaced. Eventually cools off. Somewhat.
  • Yang and Emerald meet as kids this time around, and it takes them perhaps minutes to become bitter rivals to each other due to the diametrically opposed personalities and combat styles. Emerald considers Ruby to be okay though. By chapter 43, Emerald and Yang count each other as friends.
  • Far more serious with Emerald and Vernal. Vernal is not only older and stronger, which causes Emerald to fear being replaced, but also Vernal herself is outright hostile from the second they meet and considers Emerald her "replacement," which sets off fears in Emerald that Jaune will get rid of her if she's not strong enough.
  • Vernal, on the other hand, actually does view Emerald as a "replacement," and sees her as getting the life she could have had if Jaune had taken her instead of Emerald.
  • Winter and Qrow first work together on the mission to Menagerie, and instantly start flinging barbs back and forth. Jaune and some others had suspicions of Belligerent Sexual Tension based on their introduction in the original timeline, but seeing this he's forced to conclude that certain people are simply destined to butt heads.
  • Emerald towards Young Jaune due to her misconceptions. She knows her father used to be Jaune Arc but changed his name for some vague reason beyond necessity. Since Young Jaune looks so much like Jaune Ashari, Emerald assumes her father was disowned by his family, who named another child Jaune in an attempt to pretend he never existed. As a result, she hates Young Jaune for "replacing" her father.
• Hate Sink: Alexander Nikos is easily the single most hated character in the story despite having only a few scenes. He seems designed to fill the role Mr. Schnee would normally fill (abusive rich father figure), but impossibly he comes off as even more vile then Jacques Schnee's canon portrayal.
• The Heart: In addition to being Team Mom, Summer plays this for her team and extended family, much like how her younger daughter was in the original timeline.
• Heartbroken Badass:
  • Jaune points out that he's lost people before, even those he grew to love, but he's had time to deal with the loss and hasn't fallen into a "Woe is me, no one can love me or they'll die" mindset. It does cause him some problems between him and Emerald when he sees Pyrrha in a tournament that Emerald was competing in, though.
  • Averted for the Xiao-Long/Rose family. Without Summer's death, Yang never has to step up as Mom of the house, Taiyang doesn't crumble to the point he needs a therapy dog, and Qrow doesn't become the sullen alcoholic that his main counterpart is known for.
• Heel–Face Turn: Jaune mentions offhand that in the Bad Future, Whitley turned on his father once he went too far, and was killed shortly after.
• Heroic Sacrifice: With no other options left, Jaune has to leave the Schnee family's fate in the hands of Willow when Ozma has them all hostage at gunpoint. With a bit of resigned conviction from the Relic of Choice, she brings it to Ozma as instructed, but tackles him to the ground, taking gunshots in the process. Likely dead already, she is finished off when Jaune runs the two of them through with his blade before Ozma can recover. Her actions save the rest of her family.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: One of Jaune's issues, and why he doesn't realize all the waves he's making until after they've been shoved in his face, is that he has self-esteem issues that go back to well before the Downer Beginning. Mentally, he still sees his skill level as being of that at his seventeen-year-old self, before he Took a Level in Badass, so he thinks he's unimpressive. This wasn't helped by constantly being surrounded by people who outclassed him in literally every way possible, or by his personal trainer being Pyrrha Nikos. This is compounded by the lingering guilt at not being able to save Pyrrha or any of his other friends.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Jaune ends up as this, at least in Atlas, after protecting a peaceful White Fang rally against an angry mob. It goes up to eleven after the White Fang turn militant and attack the Vytal Festival later that year, though this was self-invoked by Jaune so that Ironwood wouldn't take the blame and be able to become the General that Atlas needs.
• History Repeats:
  • Jaune once again completely fails to notice when a woman is romantically interested in him until their imminent separation forced her to reveal her feelings. Thankfully things ended a lot better with Specialist Foxtrot than they did with Pyrrha. Jaune must be blind to Hint Dropping from people named Nikos — specifically, Helena Nikos, Pyrrha's older sister.
  • The Vytal Festival is once again attacked by the White Fang, causing Jaune to have a traumatic flashback to his own experience. This time, however, it's not the Vale Vytal Festival that's attacked, it's Atlas, and while Salem is providing aid, it's in the form of Hazel and Tyrian, rather than Grimm and Cinder.
• Hollywood Hacking: Downplayed; Watts' viruses are incredibly powerful, essentially being able to take over Argus for him, but the actual logistics of such a move are played rather realistically. For instance, as Terra points out, outright reversing his actions is next to impossible because in order for his plan to work, he had to physically make his code be a part of Argus' systems, meaning that the best she can do to restore power to the hospital is divert power from neighboring buildings while they work to rewrite the code he hijacked.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Rashem, the man who Jaune sold his Scroll to, promises that he will never forget Jaune's help on his way to greatness. Years later, the man names Jaune a member of his board and opens a business account for him to the tune of over five million lien.
  • Winter. While she's still more action-oriented than a standard executive, she's running the SDC's security handily and is able to drop the attacks on their property by sixty percent. After the destruction of the White Fang, Winter swoops in, takes the prisoners, and refuses to hand them to the Atlesian government, mentioning that Ghira Belladonna's death sets a precedent she's not willing to follow. This results in a massive PR victory for the SDC, leaving her father ecstatic she's managed to increase the company's value and encouraging reforms while simultaneously destroying its enemies.
• Honor Among Thieves: Invoked, and then immediately Downplayed. Junior doesn't think the "Union 46" gang inviting The Red Ax Gang to a meeting is a trap, but only because it would needlessly hurt their reputation by lying. If they'd wanted a fight right now, the Union would've just done the practical thing and ambushed them where they were vulnerable, instead of giving them time to prepare for a meeting.
• Honorary Uncle: After Summer makes a close family friend out of Jaune, Ruby and Yang's younger selves come to consider him as much an uncle as Qrow. Jaune's adopted daughter Emerald in turn eventually refers to Summer and Tai as her aunt and uncle respectively after she comes around to them. Apparently, Roman Torchwick, who now has a working relationship with Jaune in the underworld, once tried to call himself Uncle Roman in front of Emerald. Once.
• Honor-Related Abuse: Alexander Nikos to a T. He's bent on making his daughters into the ultimate invincible prize fighter as per the family tradition — and he's not above using physical violence to discourage defeat. His eldest, Helena, couldn't take it and ran away from home to join the military in Atlas. He then turned his eyes to Pyrrha when she became old enough for training, but Jaune saving Helena's life allowed her to return home, if just to spare her little sister from their father's "care" by becoming her combat instructor herself.
• Hope Spot: Summer gets one after the Fang attack on the tournament. She'll finally get to introduce the man who saved her life all those years ago (Jaune) to her family properly, and perhaps even pseudo-adopt him into hers. It seems to be going well, with even the suspicious Qrow seeming to warm up to him a little... then Ruby screams and dives away from Jaune in horror, because the last time she saw him he was literally slicing a Faunus to pieces and covering her in its blood. Jaune leaves quickly after that, and isn't seen by the family again until after he sets up the ASH Gym in Vale.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Jaune has a bad habit of judging people based on what he knows of them from his previous life. He can read their emotions and such quite well, but he will often dismiss his observations in favor of his preconceived assumptions. The most striking example of this comes when he stubbornly believes that Adam is the same violent psychopath he was originally — which he's not — and Blake is well-meaning and trustworthy — which she's not.
• Horseback Heroism: Students are taught how to ride horses as part of their curriculum in their final years of Beacon, as lack of paved roads outside the Kingdoms, the Grimm's tendency to ignore animals, and their ability to carry cargo make them valuable methods of transportation for huntsmen.
• Hourglass Plot: The original timeline saw Ozpin gather the protagonists, and travel the world to collect the Relics, with the goal of forcing a final confrontation with Salem. Jaune expressed misgivings at the time and especially hates it in hindsight for getting all of his friends killed. In the final arc of the story, it's Jaune who wants to gather the Relics and force the final battle, while Ozpin isn't desperate enough to see the risk as worth it and opposes him.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Because of the circumstances of his travelling to the past, Jaune becomes one of the only people in the world who has the ability of real magic. But not having been born with it, and all knowledge of it having been wiped out, Jaune has no idea what the extent of his powers are or how to make them work. Needless to say, his efforts to figure things out are a slow-going uphill battle of trial and error, when he makes progress it's mostly by accident, and his fumbling often makes things worse. After getting all of an ancient instruction book, a cipher to read it, some description of how to activate magic, and a guinea pig in one Arthur Watts, Jaune can finally start to intentionally learn things and practice them. By the end, he's learned enough that he compares it to driving a car but not inventing or building one, in that he can work within functions already set up by someone with better knowledge (and mess with them in ways that will break them) but can't create something new himself.
• Hypocrite:
  • Alexander Nikos demands that Jaune and Emerald step down from the winner's circle because Emerald cheated by using her Semblance... when everyone saw that the chains that wrapped up Pyrrha's weapon came to life earlier in the fight.
    • Years later, he still claims that Emerald cheated, before demanding that Pyrrha use her own semblance in tournaments.
  • For all his talk about doing things differently than Ozpin, Jaune has shown that he is just as capable of the callous manipulation and deceit that he condemns Ozpin for and doesn't even realize it. Both frequently lie to their allies to protect their own secrets and both run educational institutions for children for the purpose of teaching them how to fight. Jaune tries to justify himself to Summer by claiming that he only wants the children to be capable of defending themselves if they're in danger, while Ozpin seeks to mold them into soldiers in his secret war; he caps this off by stating his desire to kill Salem himself instead of leaving someone else to do it. Once Raven learns the truth about Jaune, she wastes no time in calling him out for keeping secrets.
    • This even extends to how he treats some of the people under him. While he loathes Ozpin for making them pawns and placing their lives in danger for his Forever War, which got most of them killed in his timeline, here in the Mistral Regional Tournament he is all too willing to risk Vernal getting killed by Cinder in order to discover whether or not she was still working for Salem in this timeline, treating her as a pawn as well.
  • Jaune chastises Emerald over breaking Cardin's arm for insulting him but threatens Alexander Nikos with a fight for insulting Emerald.
• Hypocritical Humor: Winter Schnee has sworn off alcohol because of what the drink has done to Mrs Schnee. She still feels the need to grab a bottle after learning what her father thinks of her Love Interest.

I - N

• Idiot Ball: Jaune has witnessed first-hand how his alterations change people around him, sometimes quite drastically. Yet when he meets Blake in Menagerie, he assumes her to be the same person she was in the original timeline and believes that stubbornly, even though Blake's behaviour points to her having become far more hateful and extreme in her beliefs. When Blake asks Jaune to follow her into a dark alley, he obliges without any suspicion. Once "they" get ambushed, he turns his back to the girl, prompting a rather predictable result. Pretty much all of Jaune's friends and colleagues call him out on this once he tells them what happened
• I Hate Past Me: Downplayed with Jaune. Whenever he thinks about his attempts to woo Weiss, he's amazed by how bad he was, at one point saying Weiss had the patience of a saint. Upon actually meeting his past self, Jaune's further embarrassed by his younger self's introduction, thinking that it was even worse than he remembered.
• I Have Many Names: Jaune. So far: Jaune Arc, The Healer, Raven's Champion, Jaune Ashari, The Smiling Man, Henry Waters-Brown, and Goldilocks. The White Fang call him The Specialist.
• I Just Want to Be Loved/Because You Were Nice to Me: Chapter 45 reveals this as a big motivation of Vernal's, and why she's so fixated on Jaune. The Branwen Tribe isn't too big on touchy-feely things, so Jaune teaching her when he stayed with the tribe was a huge deal to her because he could actually teach instead of what the Tribe did — insult her, tell her to get back up, and ready for the next bout. He actually cared about her in that brief time he was there, and as someone who had never been cared about by anyone before, ever, Vernal latched onto that. It's also why she's so harsh to Emerald at the start. Her comment of how Emerald was a "replacement," for her wasn't just an insult, it was her honest feeling, that Jaune had abandoned her and found a new child to take in, that Emerald is taking the place that she should have had.
• Immortal Immaturity: After years of castigating and proclaiming the worst of the Brother Gods for their actions thousands of years ago, a discussion with Team STQ gets Jaune to consider another hypothesis: that the Brothers were, in the grand scheme of things, in their relative infancy at the time, doing something that they'd explicitly never done before (possibly something that had never been done before), and the reprehensible behavior that he hates them for may have originated from a lack of wisdom and experience they may have already grown out of. Jaune tentatively concedes that it is plausible. It proves to be on the right track in the end. When asked, Jinn admits that the Gods have no interest in repeating all the mistakes they made when they walked amongst humanity, and have even accepted fault and apologized to Ozma and Salem after welcoming them to the afterlife.
• Immortals Fear Death: Ozpin reveals to Jaune that his real reason for trying to stop him from killing Salem is that after all this time, he actually doesn't want to die.
• Implausible Deniability: After Jaune just happens to be present when Pyrrha is revealed to be the Fall Maiden, Ozpin mentally notes that Jaune is present for so many major events like this that he doesn't understand why either of them try to keep up the pretense that he's not somehow involved.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: You can't blame Winter Schnee for reacting like this after being told that her father is planning her Arranged Marriage to a man that was about twice her age when she first met him. After all, it's not everyday that your Corrupt Corporate Executive excuse of a father wants you to marry the guy you actually love despite the age-gap.
• Inelegant Blubbering: According to Winter, a Schnee crying is a rather ugly affair due to their pale complexions and white clothes.
• Insistent Terminology: Young Jaune is convinced that Raven Branwen is one of the Fae (of the Winter Court to be precise, and the research and observations he's made would back that up to the untrained observer). No matter how many times she tells him no, he's an idiot for thinking that, he still calls her a Fae.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • A rare case for this story. The Rose/Xiao Long Household still gets Zwei. Instead of being a therapy dog to help Taiyang to deal with Summer's death (as is the case is the author's other RWBY fanfictions), Zwei is now a gift for Ruby after her traumatic experience in the White Fang attack during the Vytal Festival Tournament in Atlas.
  • Emerald still gets her chain-blade-guns from canon, if a little rougher in design thanks to Jaune not remembering exactly how they worked.
  • Raven still becomes the Spring Maiden.
  • Ironwood still becomes the General of Atlas, although this one required some manipulation on Jaune's part.
  • It's years earlier and with some encouragement from Salem's agents, but Sienna Khan still takes leadership of the White Fang from Ghira.
  • Jacques becomes a better person than he was and would be, but just barely too late for Willow. Per the timeline, his mellowing-out began to happen shortly after the Schnee parents' argument on Weiss's tenth birthday, the event that caused her to fully fall into depression and alcoholism. Even years later, she still isn't functional.
  • Cinder Fall still joins with Salem.
  • Weiss still gets sick of Jaune early on, although this time it's not for his romantic gestures, but because Winter won't stop talking about him.
  • One thing Jaune fears about changing too much, or going after known future allies or targets of Salem and her forces, is that ultimately this trope might come into play. For example, say that he hunts down and kills Cinder five years before Beacon. There's no reason that Salem couldn't just train up another girl that Jaune will know nothing about to take on Cinder's role, and this time he'll have no knowledge of her strengths, weaknesses, goals, and plans.
  • The Malachite twins still work with Junior.
  • Likewise, Neo and Roman are still a pair.
  • Even with him getting motivation from Jaune earlier in the timeline, Sun Wukong still won't wear a shirt.
  • While for completely different reasons, Adam is still fiercely determined towards Blake — only he intends to save her from her path of darkness, and not control her as his toy, like in the original timeline.
  • Additionally, Adam still gets a scar on his face, even if it's under completely different circumstances.
  • Raven still diverts attention from her by presenting a decoy Spring Maiden. The divergence lays in the fact that Qrow mistakenly assumed Nora was the Maiden, and Raven rolled with it instead of deliberately grooming a girl for the role.
  • Despite being far more of an extremist than canon, Blake still attends Beacon.
  • Pyrrha is still made the Fall Maiden, albeit on accident.
  • Leo is still a traitor to Ozpin's cause and is thrown away by Salem's group once they're done with him.
  • Jaune is actually relying on this trope to occur regarding Oscar, as Ozpin reincarnating into Oscar's body is the only piece of the timeline that he can possibly use to prove he's a time traveller to Summer. Luckily for him, this remains the case - Ozpin jumps into Oscar upon his death.
• Instant Expert: Despite not even knowing about the Maidens, Pyrrha uses her Fall Maiden powers to oneshot an enemy who completely outclassed her less than an hour after gaining said powers.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Young Jaune just finishes declaring that his "fairy godmother" is the strongest in the world and no one can beat her when Raven tumbles through a portal badly injured and unconscious.
• Insult Backfire: Emerald doesn't understand why being a "daddy's girl" could be considered an insult.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In Chapter 50, Jinn tells Raven that Jaune is from a Bad Future. This includes the fate of her daughter.
  • In Chapter 94, Young Jaune and Emerald find out about the connection between Raven and Yang and how Raven abandoned her daughter. Jaune does not take it well at all.
  • Chapter 103 has Summer Rose learn the truth about Jaune, including her early death in the original timeline and just how much pain she accidentally caused her family. She also learns that Jaune saving her life was a complete accident. It's played with in that while she is shocked and horrified, even breaking into tears, she still refuses to believe it until she can get concrete proof. She gets it in Chapter 114.
  • Chapter 149 ends with Jaune giving his whole story to Ironwood, suggesting he could prove it with a blood test to compare with Young Jaune.
  • Chapter 172 has at least Qrow getting the basics of Jaune's story. Considering he had just watched Jaune fading away into nothing right in front of him, he has little choice but to believe it.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • Before, during, and after Jaune and Raven fight Roman, Neo, and his squad of elite mooks, they engage in some Flirting Under Fire, with some extremely specific descriptions of all the physical contact between the two. At the end of the fight, they lock eyes, and it is left rather ambiguous on exactly what kind of tension is in the air.
    Raven glanced over at Jaune with a bloodthirsty grin, and for half a second, he thought she might attack him next. Or worse.
    And then the doorbell rang, breaking the mood.
  • Cinder joining the Branwen tribe on a raid finds the whole thing wonderfully cathartic, even declaring it Better than Sex.
    Cinder's heart thumped in her ears. Her blood rushed through her body like molten lava. Every crack of her fist into a face was incredible. Every cry and plea for mercy almost erogenous.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Jaune accidentally calls Summer while she and Taiyang were having sex.
• In the Back:
  • How Jaune gets treated by Blake Belladonna after showing her a bit too much trust.
  • How Junior takes out his own father.
• Intimate Healing: Downplayed.
  • Jaune's Healing Hands requires contact, and for serious injuries, that can mean a hand on a female's upper chest in order to be close to the heart in order to improve the aura transference rate.
  • When Jaune heals a very bloody and unconscious Raven, he undresses her to clean her wounds and get her into dry clothes. It's still a serious scene though, and his time in the War against Salem put him in situations like it before. Played with when she wakes him with a threat to kill him for taking advantage, only to be joking.
• In Vino Veritas:
  • Jaune confesses some details of his tragic past and his goals for the future when Team November go out drinking for his retirement party. His personality also briefly relapses to the same somber tone it had when faced with his friends corpses, suggesting he's not as okay as he'd like people to believe.
  • Foxtrot confesses her feelings to Jaune after the night spent drinking together.
• Irony:
  • Summer is so desperate to find her savior that she gives Ozpin everything she knows, but all she has is "blonde hair and blue eyes". The first thing that Ozpin notes is that the net is so wide that his first suspect is her husband, leaving her flabbergasted.
  • After spending so long trying to find Jaune on Summer's behest while he's been in Atlas for over a year, Ozpin finally learns he's working in the Atlas Military. By the time he makes it there, Ironwood reveals that he accepted his resignation just a few hours prior and he's already long gone.
  • After protecting Winter from White Fang soldiers, Adam notes that Sienna isn't stupid enough to announce that they've captured their target when they really haven't. The next scene is Sienna doing exactly that.
  • In Volume 3 of the show, Emerald covertly used her illusion Semblance under Cinder's orders to dupe fighters in a major tournament. In the new timeline, Emerald on Jaune's orders covertly uses her Semblance to dupe Cinder when the latter is in a major tournament. The irony isn't lost on Jaune.
  • Jaune notes the irony that he spent years blaming Ozpin for trying to make Pyrrha the Fall Maiden in the original timeline, only for Jaune himself to accidentally but directly cause Pyrrha to inherit the Fall Maiden power in the new timeline.
  • The moment that finally breaks Jaune's Plausible Deniability in Ozpin's eyes (being present when Pyrrha is revealed to be the Fall Maiden) is the result of a series of events that Jaune is responsible for but absolutely did not intend to happen.
  • Deliberately invoked by Qrow when he realizes that after spending so long wishing Jaune was on his side, as soon as he actually is he wishes he was gone.
• It's All About Me: Leo is perfectly happy to work with Salem and kill all of her enemies for her, including Ozpin himself, but as soon as he's in danger he pitifully begs for his life.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Jaune doesn't want to pursue a relationship with Winter for fear it'd make her a target for Salem (any more than she already is, she is a Schnee and Salem controls the White Fang).
  • The standard response is even anticipated by Jaune and deconstructed, as the usual things to say would be "I can take care of myself," (which is true, but she's used to fighting things like the White Fang, when Salem's forces are so much worse) or "She's already in danger, why worry" (Winter's isolation in Atlas plus the aforementioned "So much worse" mean that she's far easier to take out than his other loved ones, who all live in Vale).
• It's Personal:
  • A one-sided example, to the point where several members of Salem's organization become interested in Jaune Ashari precisely because he seems to know and despise them. Starts to become more mutual after Jaune cuts off Tyrian's stinger in a later confrontation.
    • Salem becomes interested in Jaune because he bears her symbol, which shouldn't happen, as she is the only one who can do that and she knows she wasn't the one who put it on him.
  • Played with for Emerald. Jaune enters a Heroic BSoD when he sees her, but decided that this child wasn't responsible for her future-counterpart's actions, and was ashamed when he realized he'd broken her wrist in his shock. He immediately heals her and eventually adopts/kidnaps her with the reasoning of keeping her from Cinder's influence.
  • In terms of romance, Whitley clearly feels this way about Sun, since Sun seems to be making more romantic headway with Emerald than he does. Sun returns these feelings of Whitley's. Emerald doesn't care.
• It's Personal with the Dragon:
  • Winter Schnee is put in charge of the SDC's Anti-White Fang Forces by her father while Adam Taurus leads several raids against the SDC on behalf of Sienna Khan (and Salem's Forces). After Winter comes across several slaughtered SDC noncombatants in the aftermath of one of his raids, she privately swears to take his head. Actually, he was also enraged by the murders and almost killed the two White Fang members who did it before Blake stopped him. Both Adam and Winter are actually trying to change their organizations from within, yet seem to view each other as the embodiment of everything wrong with the other side. After the Menagerie debacle, the two seem to have softened their views somewhat of each other. While they're not going to be close friends anytime soon, Adam is seen as the "nice" member of the Fang who leaves SDC targets alive, and Adam recognizes that not all Schnees are as bad as Jacques.
  • While Jaune has a personal grudge against everyone working with Salem, he holds a special hatred for Tyrian because the lunatic doesn't have any sort of reason to support the Grimm Queen, just his own insanity and bloodlust. The others at least have reasons — bad ones, in some cases, but excuses for their behavior. Tyrian in return is always the one sent after Jaune, and has even developed something of a fixation on him.
  • It's revealed that Leo was the one who tricked Summer into the situation that killed her in the original timeline (which she only survived in this timeline on complete accident) and that he provided Salem's forces information about her daughters, which makes her all the more eager to "interrogate" him.
• I Want Them Alive!: Because she doesn't know why he has her mark or knows so much about her and her forces, Salem orders her minions to capture Jaune alive so she can get some answers. She later points out that she considers most of her forces expendable if it means she can get her hands on him, because only she can put the brand Jaune has on a person, but she didn't.
  • Used a few times by Atlas and some of the gangs of Vale to people who attack them, if only to find out why.
  • This saves Jaune and Emerald when they're recovering a book from a ruin, as Tyrian realizes that the only way he'd be able to take Jaune in alive is to fight at a level where either Jaune or he would die. The later is unacceptable to him for obvious reasons, and the former isn't acceptable because of the trope. Therefore, Tyrian amicably calls the whole thing off and leaves.
• The Jailbait Wait: Inverted. Winter, the jail bait in this equation, is waiting until she's of age to try and make a move on Jaune. Her father has the same idea for different reasons.
• Jerkass Genie: Young Jaune wonders if there's a way for him to get to Beacon without having to deal with his airsickness. Raven launches him headfirst through one of her portals.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Jaune says to Roman that Nora and Ren won't be terrible people with dark secrets, as they're just kids. Roman fires back that Neo is also a kid.
  • Jaune silently admits that Raven is right to call him selfish for accepting Salem's deal. Humanity had finally defeated the Grimm but he undid it all because of the deaths of his friends. Winter agrees that it was selfish but she understand why he did it and is happy he did so, if only because it means she and her siblings are still alive.
  • In hindsight, Jaune concedes that Jacques was probably right to revoke Weiss's inheritance of the SDC in the original timeline, even though he was a manipulative abusive asshole about it. Weiss treated the company as an entitlement that was owed to her rather than something she worked to earn, and simultaneously as a side gig to her main focus of being a Huntress, and that does not a good CEO make. Jaune even speculates that some of Jacques's behavior was motivated in part by frustration that the business he kept alive for decades would be left in the hands of someone who'd likely destroy it through ineffective leadership, which is a valid concern to have.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Lampshaded Raven is a bit disappointed when Jaune admits he doesn't believe she is one. She had a whole mocking laugh at the ready.
• Karma Houdini: Downplayed with Jacques Schnee. Jaune knows that the man in this timeline shouldn't be blamed for the horrific actions he eventually took in the original timeline, but also realizes that before he was a villain he was an awful husband and father that ruined his entire family's lives for years. While he becomes better thanks to Jaune's changes, it's because he effectively got what he wanted and 'won' a disagreement he didn't necessarily deserve to. Jaune and Winter express some dissatisfaction that the Schnee family is happier than ever, but only at the cost of Jacques suffering no consequences for his role in their earlier misery, besides some private shame.
• Karmic Death: Dr. Watts' demise in Chapter 147. After Watts previously caused Winter's soul to get ripped out of her body for no other reason than to spite Jaune, Jaune rips Watts' soul out of his body via magic, killing Watts in the process.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Jaune considers telling Emerald about the Bad Future he came from, only for Winter to talk him out of it, citing that doing so would only cause her unnecessary angst as she wonders if he only took her in so Cinder wouldn't. Furthermore, only three people in the world know about the Bad Future and none of them have any reason to tell anyone else.
• Keeping the Enemy Close: The reason why Jaune accepts Cinder's offer to join the ASH Gym after the tournament. It's also why Cinder offered — Jaune had Emerald make Cinder think Vernal is a Maiden.
• Kick the Dog: Ghira was completely out of the loop when the Vytal Festival got targeted, and didn't deserve the General of the Atlesian army murdering him via firing squad.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Jaune is opposed to Ozpin from the moment he's sent back in time because he knows (since Ozpin already did it in the original timeline) that Ozpin will sacrifice any and all of the people he genuinely cares about if he thinks it'll get him a real shot at defeating Salem once and for all. It becomes worse once Ozpin admits that he'll do the same thing he did in the original timeline, just as much out of a selfish want for a scenario where he can defeat Salem and live a full life after the fact as out of a belief that it's the best recourse.
• Kid Has a Point: Younger Jaune manages to give insightful advice on fear and being a coward, citing the strength people gain from fear, especially fear of losing those close to them. This actually gets through to Raven on some level as she looks like she will be taking a more active role in the war against Salem.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • During their third clash, Tyrian retreats when it becomes obvious that the battle will end in the death of either himself or Jaune. As Salem has given explicit orders for Jaune to be captured alive, neither option is appealing. Or at least, this is the reason he gives Jaune. In reality, it was a way to test Jaune's skill and to determine how much he knows about Salem's operations. And given that Jaune didn't bat an eye at Tyrian's miraculously regrown tail, he revealed more than he intended to.
  • Several of the girls at the ASH gym give up rather than seriously try for one of the spots to compete in an upcoming tournament because they'd have to beat Vernal or Yang for it, the former of whom has never been beaten by anyone except the teachers.
• Lampshade Hanging: Yang hangs one when she learns that Sun was caught pickpocketing by a strange man who was heading to Vale, who gave him words of inspiration, money, and food. Yang leans over to Emerald and bets her that the man was Jaune. Emerald tells her that's silly, and that not everything weird has to do with her dad. Not only was it Jaune, it was also a significant event in Jaune's life as it let him pinpoint how far back he went.
• Late to the Realization: Jaune learns that Winter has the hots for him months after everyone else has figured it out. Chapter 45, however, hints that he may have been deliberately ignoring it because he doesn't want the relationship due to all the other responsibilities in his life.
• Literal Genie: Salem sends Jaune much farther into the past than he really needed to. Makes sense considering that this makes Jaune much less likely to accurately use his Retroactive Precognition to manipulate events in his favor by giving him a much greater opportunity to make mistakes.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Jaune ends up as one for Emerald. The mere thought of losing him is enough to send her into hysterics and probably her greatest fear is him abandoning her.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Despite keeping Emerald aware of almost all his secrets, Jaune refuses to tell her about the timeline he came from (or even that he time travelled at all). Unlike most examples, this is a very good thing: as Winter points out, not only would learning that she was a villain cause Emerald more pain than she has reason to feel, but it would call her relationship to Jaune, the thing she bases almost everything she does on, into question.
  • Though she isn't aligned with the villains, Omaira the Summer Maiden proved to be an antagonist in the original timeline and the same in the new one, entirely out of ignorance. Having been given the power by random chance, then immediately fleeing civilization, the significance of the power was never explained to her like the other Maidens. Omaira made her own assumptions about what it meant, assumptions which caused her and the heroes to come to blows when they came bearing the truth.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Faunus night vision gives them an obvious advantage when fighting humans at night or in dark places. But it also makes them far more susceptible to flashbangs in those same circumstances. Jaune keeps one around for just such an occasion.
  • Flashbangs also work just fine on humans as well. Even if someone doesn't have enhanced vision or hearing, it's still a massive flash of light and painful wave of sound designed to incapacitate in a way that you can't really train for, as Qrow, Glynda, Weiss, Pyrrha, and Whitley find out.
    • Flashbangs have their drawbacks as well. Jaune bemoans that outside of a heavily militarized society like Atlas, it's harder to get his hands on them, and that it'll be even harder (if not impossible) to get his hands on some if Atlas goes to war.
  • Mecha-shift weaponry is extremely versatile but is also crippled if someone manages to jam it. Emerald gets the upper hand on Pyrrha by entangling the chain of one of her weapons on the redhead's weapon, leaving it unable to transform.
  • A Maiden's eyes glow with fire when they use their powers, making them an obvious target in the dark. Similarly, wind and lightning are very loud elements to attack with, covering up the sounds of someone approaching. This gives Jaune the upper hand when fighting Amber in some old ruins since he can see and hear her but she can't see or hear him.
  • As much as Jaune's changes to the timeline have been largely positive, it also means that when Summer demands proof that he's a time traveller, he has absolutely no way to prove his claims anymore - any information he can use is no longer valid, and he knows nothing unique about her since she died before he could meet her in the original timeline.
• Long Game: One of Jaune's criticisms towards Ozpin is that he's already written off the current generation and is trying to recruit their children for the fight against Salem. Oz defends this (unintentionally) by pointing out that when one is immortal, and your enemy is immortal, you can't just plan for the next fight or who you'll be fighting with tomorrow — you have to plan what your allies will be or what actions you take decades down the road.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Defied. During Beacon's initiation, the new students are told that the first two people to touch each relic will be partners. The new students attempt to scam the rules for determining partners, but don't realize that the relics are tied to their scrolls and send out an alert when someone touches it.
  • Jaune makes clear to Emerald that so long as she's willing to accept the consequences, she's free to deal with Cardin as she wishes, short of simply giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown outside of official spars.
• Love Triangle: There appears to be one developing between Whitley, Emerald, and Sun, with the boys competing for the hand of Emerald... and Emerald not caring at all.
• Magically-Binding Contract: It's revealed in chapter 124 that all of Salem's Inner Circle are given a "mark of loyalty" (not to be confused with "Salem's Sigil" that she gave to Jaune at the beginning of the story), and if she discovers that one of them disappoints/fails her in a way that let's down her expectations significantly, she utilizes a form of "soul-torture" that, as Cinder's puts it, burns the soul rather than the skin and causes pure agony. She also mentions that Salem once used it on Tyrian, who was reduced to petty wails by the pain. Jaune decides to go through with receiving said "mark of loyalty" to keep his cover after Salem lists its benefits, such as Grimm not attacking him (though they will in circumstances that would make him stand out when with other people), alongside letting him share some extent of power over Grimm that Salem has. Raven calls him out for this big time, telling him that he'd better hope he keeps his cover intact since he has now given Salem a kill switch that will leave his life forfeit if she catches on to his true motives.
• The Magic Goes Away: Once Salem is dead, her own magic fades from the world, Ozma's reincarnation ends, and the Relics that were gifted to humanity as a counter to Salem become inert. The power of the four Maidens, having long since escaped the control of its origin Ozma, still exists, but it's unknown how long that will last. Similarly, after Jaune is brought back to his original time, Salem and Ozma are obviously dead and the Gods see fit to take back the Relics, their purpose fulfilled. The divine power from an ancient era that had continued to shape history all the way to the modern day is now all but extinguished in both timelines.
• Magnetic Hero: Jaune has some shades of this, forming his own "faction" separate from Ozpin's and Salem's. So far, he has the loyalty/friendship/admiration of a tribe of Vacuoan Nomads, Sun, Ren and Nora, Summer, Raven, Junior, Emerald, Ironwood, a team of Atlas Specialists, Winter, the CEO of the fastest growing electronics company on Remnant, Oobleck, and (dubiously) Roman and Neo. This is mostly by just genuinely being a good guy, but his Terror Hero nature definitely helps in a few cases, and sometimes (such as Emerald's case) it's both at once.
• Mama Bear: Summer takes a hard stance against Ozpin when he tries to recruit Yang for Beacon two years early. While Taiyang calmly convinces Yang to wait until she's seventeen, Summer tells Ozpin in a quietly furious tone that she won't allow it. In general, she doesn't appreciate Ozpin trying to pressure her daughters to become pawns in his Secret War, and snaps at him when he tries to subtly make them into assets. She eventually turns against Ozpin completely, killing his current form, when she hears what Ozpin is willing to do to Yang and Ruby in order to fulfill the plan from the original timeline.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Played with. Junior fears that he and his Red Ax Gang will be used as pawns in Jaune's plot to unite the Vale Criminal Underworld under one group. Instead, Jaune intends to be a source of funds, and an occasional "problem solver" and only wants to influence and unify the gangs against Salem's agents. He's more than happy to let Junior run things.
  • Tyrian and Hazel are this for the White Fang. While Sienna Khan is in charge, it's clear to those who know her and the group that she never takes action without consulting them. This also means that Salem is the real power behind the White Fang.

• Marriage of Convenience: Jacques is gunning for one between Jaune and Winter.
• Master of Illusion: Per canon, Neo and Emerald. Neo's illusions, though, are more akin to a hologram from a science-fiction show, in that they exist and everyone can see them. Emerald's illusions are more akin to creating hallucinations that only her target can see. Best shown when the two have a staring contest. It looks like Neo isn't blinking at all, while Emerald is blinking freely, but Neo doesn't know that because she's caught in Emerald's illusion.
• May–December Romance: To a minor extent, but Jaune mentions that the age gap between Winter and himself is one thing he'd have to work through if he was interested in seeing Winter as more than a friend or student.
• Meaningful Rename: Downplayed. Forging a new identity for himself in the past, Jaune changes his last name from Arc to Ashari, effectively claiming the name of the Del'Ashari Tribe who took him in and deemed him one of their own. This becomes a plot point, as the Del'Ashari's name is connected to Ozma and Salem's past.
• Metaphorically True: By re-interpreting cowardice as a fear of losing their loved ones, or throw everything she cared about away for mere survival, Jaune convinces Raven to spur herself to action and take a more active stance in opposing Salem and her forces.
• Mildly Military: Team November at times. They go out drinking together regularly, dislike VIP functions where they have to stand around looking impressive, see no problem in what is essentially fraternization, and constantly tease both each other. In turn, Captain Ironwood refers to them by rank rarely enough for it to be an immediate tell that he's hiding something.
• Mind Rape:
  • Emerald does this unintentionally to Pyrrha. Emerald used her hallucination-inducing Semblance on her mid-fight with no clear image in mind. This was just meant to buy a second or two of time while she gained distance. Then the screaming began.
  • The next chapter turned the above into a partial Subversion. The hallucination specifically made Pyrrha relive Emerald's memory of the White Fang's attack to the Amity Colosseum through her eyes. Pyrrha actually managed to come out mostly alright from it, if understandable shaken from the illusory brush with death, but the one thing that truly disturbed her was experiencing Emerald's feelings when Jaune saved her as her own. Her sheer satisfaction with the death of the man who tried to kill her and her complete lack of fear of the even more terrifying one that saved her were bad enough, but those pale in comparison with the pure and upsetting reassurance Emerald derived from the fact Jaune was willing to commit gruesome murder for her — to say nothing of how Pyrrha could feel herself/Emerald loving him for it. No wonder the 11-year-old girl screamed her lungs out until Emerald knocked her out soon afterwards.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Emerald and Vernal attempting to discover why Oscar is attempting to train Ruby despite her constantly saying no ends with them discovering that Oscar and Ozpin are the same entity.
• Mirror Character: As much as Jaune would initially hate to admit it given his personal distaste for Ozpin over his future self's extremes, the fic makes it increasingly apparent as the plot progresses that Ozpin and Jaune Ashari have a lot in common despite their mutual wariness of each-other. They're both powerful, fiercely intelligent men of gray morals who have their fingers in various pies across Remnant, and are out to prevent Salem destroying the world. Jaune eventually even ends up forming a counterpart of his own to Ozpin's benevolent conspiracy group with Raven and a couple other trusted allies.
• Mistaken for Pedophile:
  • More like Mistaken For Ephebophile, but people thinks Jaune and Winter Schnee are a hot — if inappropriate— item. Qrow takes the chance to snark at him about the rumors on the tabloids about them.
  • When Jaune first takes Emerald in, she thinks that he's there for reasons related to this trope, as she's seen "nice" people take in orphan kids off the street... to heartbreaking results. Before she realizes that Jaune wants to keep her around for being herself and not for sexual purposes, she thinks to herself that "I'll just take the free stuff he's giving me and die happy when it's my time."
  • The same as with Winter starts to happen with Pyrrha. The fact that Jaune seems so interested in her when she barely knows him gives Pyrrha and Helena some unsavory suspicions about the nature of that interest, though they both give him the benefit of the doubt because of Helena's history with him. Jaune is mortified when he's told that's how he sometimes comes across (partly because it hits too close to home), and later makes sure to keep a respectful distance from Pyrrha and clearly define their relationship so she doesn't get the wrong idea.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: Roman Torchwick mistakes Raven Branwen with a High-Class Call Girl. You can almost hear the Mass "Oh, Crap!" echoing from the readers the moment the words "high-class whore" leave his mouth.
• Mistaken for Racist: While Jaune is briefly incognito among the White Fang, he's surprised to find out that they have a perception of him as being a faunus hater, based on how brutally he slaughtered the Fang at the Vytal Festival. Further, there are rumors that he left Atlas because they kicked him out for being too extreme even for them. Of course, neither are true. He slaughtered them brutally because 1) he does that to enemies regardless of race, 2) they had unwittingly pushed his Trauma Button, and 3) they were about to murder his loved ones. And his resignation was planned months earlier.
• Mistaken for Romance
  • Qrow gets the idea that Raven and Jaune are, at the very least, sleeping together. Raven doesn't bother to correct him. Jaune tries to, but Qrow isn't buying it. Summer and Taiyang also get suspicious because of how unusually close they were, and are very relieved to be proven wrong when Jaune gets engaged to Winter.
  • It's revealed later that this is the assumption the Branwen Tribe comes to in order to explain Raven's frequent visits to him. Jaune finds this mortifying, Raven thinks it's both hilarious and a convenient cover story.
• The Mole: Salem has Cinder change her immediate role from her anticipated killng of the Fall Maiden and attack on Beacon's Vytal Festival, to being a spy to get close to Jaune Ashari. Cinder chafes a little bit under these orders, since her new assignment doesn't give her the same opportunity to prove herself, or reward her with the power she craves. Unfortunately for them both, it's mostly a waste of her time since Jaune is onto her from the start.
• Mood Whiplash: A minor example, but when Team STQ are teasing Jaune about Winter kissing him, Jaune tells them that he's pretending really hard that it wasn't a kiss of romance, but to thank him for teaching her siblings, because he can't return her feelings. The mood quickly turns somber.
• Mook Horror Show: Jaune often comes off as this to various criminals. So far, he has caused the murders of King and all his top Lieutenants (notably, Junior kills King himself to get Jaune to stop). In his Goldilocks persona, he snuck into a rival gang headquarters, snuck out, then blew it up with no one inside realizing anything was wrong. Then, he massacred a van full of attacking gang members alongside The Ace of the Union. Next, he casually took down Roman's gang unarmed (and, more impressively, managed to somewhat restrain an offended Raven from killing the entire group).
  • Justified in that he is a Shell-Shocked Veteran who has been Conditioned to Accept Horror. Might be leading to him becoming The Dreaded of the Vale criminal underworld. Also most mooks are just normal humans with a little martial arts training or a weapon. Even if they have their Aura unlocked, those that can fight against trained Hunters or those with equivalent experience are very rare. Most of them fall into a level of the thugs that Ruby beat up in the first episode of canon. Someone like Jaune against them — or god forbid, Raven — is a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • When the White Fang kidnaps Winter, Jaune tears through their forces with such ferocity and efficiency that Sienna insists he's a demon rather than a human.
• Morality Chain: Jaune and Roman to Emerald and Neo, respectively, since the adults act as this for the somewhat sociopathic children in their care — albeit guiding them in a life of crime in the process. In chapter 47, Emerald outright states her moral compass amounts to "Would this action upset Jaune?", such as not betting using Whitley's money because Jaune wouldn't like it.
• Morality Pet: Played straight with Blake trying to prevent Adam from getting too violent or jaded in the increasingly extremist White Fang. And, unlike canon, Adam actually wants her to do this because he doesn't trust himself not to slide deeper into extremism if left to his own devices. The problem is that eventually, he has to turn into her Morality Pet, as she keeps sliding into the same extremism that he did in canon.
• More Dakka:
  • Qrow wasn't happy to learn that Coco (who trains at the ASH gym) has, as per canon, her primary weapon be a minigun. He was especially unhappy to learn what being shot with four thousand rubber bullets a minute feels like. He was extra especially unhappy to learn that when Summer tried to count the bruises, she gave up and said "One," as in his entire front side was one massive bruise. And he just got plain mad when he learned that Jaune didn't normally allow her to use it in combat anyway, and that Jaune forgot to tell Taiyang and Qrow they shouldn't allow her to do that.
  • King says that one of the ways a non-hunter can fight someone with Aura is by shooting them enough until their shields break.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Jaune realizes that helping Emerald with her emotional dependence of him is bound to hurt her no matter what he tries. Reassuring her that he'll be always be there for her will destroy her if anything ever happens to him; highlighting his mortality may help prepare her for such a possibility, but it also reaffirms her willingness to eliminate anything or anyone that could try and take him away from her.
  • After learning that Ren and Nora were taken in by Arthur Watts, Jaune realizes he can't rescue them because they'd be used as hostages against him. But if he doesn't, they'll be indoctrinated by Salem.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • Vernal, and later on an unnamed adult member of the Branwen Tribe both tried to play around with the Tribe's injured "prisoner." The end result being Vernal growing an obsession with fighting Jaune, and the rest of the Tribe acting on their best behavior around him.
  • Both Sun and Emerald try to pickpocket Jaune on separate occasions. Luckily for each, Jaune isn't interested in harming them, though he did have to heal Emerald's wrist after he reflexively broke it.
  • King sends half a dozen of his Mooks against Jaune only to learn the hard way that Jaune is a huntsman of considerable skill. Jaune even thinks to himself that Yang would never let him live it down if he couldn't take on six untrained enemies with no Aura.
  • Roman Torchwick robs an event with several of the most powerful and influential people of Vale and Atlas present. Subverted in that this was an entirely intentional move on his part to build up his reputation, and he actually gets away with it too... Initially.
  • Played straight when Roman, due to a tip-off from Junior (who is actually allied with Jaune), decides to rob Henry Waters-Brown, which is actually one of Jaune's aliases. While a bit nervous at his "victims" Dissonant Serenity, he remains cocky enough to imply that a visiting Raven is a High-Class Call Girl that "Henry" has hired. She is suddenly no longer amused.
  • Alabaster Winchester extorts Jaune for one and a half million lien after Emerald beats up his son Cardin in a fight the boy started. Not only is he shocked to learn Jaune is a multi-millionaire without considering his ties to the SDC, but Jaune hires Roman to steal the money back.
• Multilayer Façade: Jaune creates multiple identities for himself and rarely reveals all of them to everyone. Most people, including his friends, know him as Jaune Ashari. His criminal partners are aware of him being Henry Waters-Brown as well as Goldilocks. Winter seems to be aware of the former, but not the latter identity. Emerald, having been with Jaune for a long time, knows all his names and personas, but doesn't understand the significance between the original "Jaune Arc" name. So far, Raven knows the most about Jaune, having even managed to learn about his past as Jaune Arc, though she cannot quite connect all the dots.
• Multitasked Conversation: Qrow and Jaune are very circumspect when discussing their tense first meeting so as to not mention Raven in front of Yang. Played for laughs when she immediately gets the wrong idea.
  Yang: Is this about a girl? Mr Ashari, did you cuck my Uncle Qrow?
• Mundane Luxury:
  • Almost everything counts for a seven year old Emerald: hot food, hot water, soft beds, new clothes, etc. At one point, she's irritated that her stomach is demanding food when she'd just eaten the previous day, thinking that she'd ever eaten that frequently before. Once Jaune gets them an apartment, Emerald mentally gushes over having her own bed, thinking most kids her age were lucky to have a dirty blanket to sleep under.
  • Played for laughs with Raven, who teleports to Jaune's house on a semi-regular basis to raid his fridge, commandeer his bed or couch, get a shower and breakfast, and leave in the morning. It annoys Jaune and Emerald to differing degrees. She openly states that she wishes it was possible for her to form a "bond" (which is necessary for her to make portals) with inanimate objects, because she would definitely make one to the bed in Jaune's guest room.
• Mundane Solution: For a given value of "mundane"; Jaune's solution to Watts' hostage situation is to leave his scroll in an area Watts can't monitor, buy two more, then speak to Watts through another scroll while the original stays hidden. Watts laments the fact that he wasn't even outsmarted, Jaune was just a bit too creative and he a bit too arrogant.
• Mundane Utility:
  • During a meeting between Jaune and Roman, Emerald and Neo have a staring contest, using their Semblances to hide that they're blinking.
  • Qrow uses his incredible ability to turn into a bird and fly to avoid taking the elevator. Ozpin is annoyed at this.
  • Raven uses her portals to sneak into Jaune's house and steal his beer.
  • Sun and Whitley use their Semblances in an effort to win an air hockey game against each other.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Jaune is so keen on killing people who oppose him that Emerald mentally refers to murdering Tyrian as "Jaune's way of doing things". Jaune's penchant for violence is one of the things Hazel calls him out on during their fight.
• My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad
  • Yang and Emerald once got in an argument like that over Qrow and Jaune. Justified as the girls were only 11 and 12, respectively, at the time. Made hilarious by the Dramatic Irony that Qrow was indeed beaten up by Jaune shortly before Emerald's adoption.
  • Vernal's way of expressing her love for Jaune once he formally adopts her is basically to loudly and aggressively brag to everyone about how her dad is the best dad and the strongest dad who could beat the shit out of anyone else's dad. He could beat up Coco's dad, as if that means anything since he is an accountant. He could beat up Glynda's dad, who is dead, and when informed of this just says that it supports her statement.
• Mysterious Backer: Jaune is shaping up to become one for multiple parties, ranging from Junior's gang to Oobleck's archaeology work.
• Mythology Gag: Jaune inadvertently alludes to White Sheep (RWBY) when he discovers where his adopted surname actually came from.

  Jaune: "No wonder Ozpin got paranoid. I might as well be running around calling myself Jaune Salem Arc. Bloody hell."

• Nay-Theist: After his past life Jaune is aware of the existence of gods, but he doesn't worship or even respect them, seeing them as Jerkass Gods whom humanity owes nothing to.
• Necessarily Evil: Jacques outright calls himself a "necessary evil" when talking about his past with the company. He says that his amoral actions did achieve financial success for the company and ensure that it will never disappear, but it also tanked his reputation to the point that he can't go any further. He refers to Jaune and Winter as a "blank slate", saying that they don't need to be as meticulous as he was because people will judge them by their own actions instead of his.
• Neck Snap: Jaune kills Jax Asturias in this manner. It's played relatively realistically, with Jaune noting that, as it's his first time doing so, it's much harder than it looks.
• Neutral No Longer: In chapter 68, Raven officially abandons neutrality and throw her lot in with Jaune.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: One of Jaune's biggest regrets in the original timeline (besides the everyone-dying part) is that he never got to see his father again after running away to join Beacon. By the time he would have had the chance, Nicholas had already died in the line of duty. Having Nicholas unexpectedly show up at his home in the new timeline gives Jaune a powerful impulse to break character to connect with his family again.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Jaune's interference in a White Fang rally led to Tyrian and Hazel infiltrating the organization, turning it violent three years early, which in turn led to the death of Ghira Belladona (Blake's father), the Fang gaining a near-impenetrable stranglehold over Menagerie, and Blake turning into the same sort of extremist that Adam was in canon.
  • In a way of "Two rights can have a wrong impact," Jaune saves Summer Rose from her canonical death, and then later saves Ruby from someone trying to kill her at the Vytal Festival. The problem is that the way he saved Ruby was by carving someone to pieces right in front of her and splattering her with blood, traumatizing her. In canon, Ruby's motivation to become a huntress was to honor the memory of Summer, and without that, becoming a huntress was just something her family did. With a lack of motivation and a great deal of trauma associated with combat, Ruby no longer wants to be a huntress.
  • Raven's rescue of Jaune from a White Fang ambush not only revealed her to be the Spring Maiden to Hazel (and thus, Salem's forces) but it also highlighted that Raven had continuous contact with Jaune for years. This causes Summer to have a minor breakdown when she reflects that Raven saved Jaune, but didn't try to save her when she was injured. It also causes suspicion between Ozpin and Qrow, and Jaune, as he never told any of them this or tried to get her to come back.
  • Jaune's rescue of Nora and Ren, and sending them off into the wilderness alone (albeit prepared) unfortunately had major consequences when it's revealed to Roman and Neo from an old lady in Anima that Watts kidnapped them because they were trying to find Jaune again.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The three generals of Salem who clash with Jaune and who (unlike Cinder) never side against Salem to the end. Hazel (Nice) is a Punch-Clock Villain who is diplomatic at best, apathetic at worst if hurting you isn't part of his mission and if you aren't Ozpin. Watts (Mean) is a narcissistic sociopath who tries to murder Winter in front of Jaune using the couple's own project purely to spite Jaune for an imagined slight, and he continues to take glee in mentally torturing Jaune while threatening to shut down an entire hospital and then bring Salem's wrath down on Jaune and his loved ones – tellingly, Jaune doesn't feel even remotely sorry about offing Watts even when the latter gets the most excruciating and undignified death of the three. Tyrian (Inbetween) is a murderous sadomasochist who revels in the death and destruction he wreaks, but even he manages to be less spiteful and slightly more valorous than Watts in the end, plus Jaune suspects that Tyrian has less moral agency in his evil actions than the others due to his insanity. The three generals are also killed in this specific order.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: During the Mistral Tournament, Pyrrha reflects that fighting had become boring since she recognizes every fighting style she sees and knows how to counter them. Seeing Emerald's terrain control and Yang utilizing her own momentum reignites her passion and makes her want to go down in the arena and fight both of them in a threeway battle.
• Non-Indicative Name: Invoked.
  • Hei Xiong, a gang leader, goes by the street name "Junior," the same name his abusive father "King" used to mock him. Justified in that he uses it to remind his father's old men who work for him now of how he's the boss after killing King.
  • Jaune points out that "The Red Ax Gang" is a rather childish, non-threatening name compared to most of the gang's competitors. For most intents this is true, they're not major players, and Junior is seen as a "soft" leader who can't escape his father's shadow. Which contributes to making many disregard them as an actual threat when they actually do start adopting more aggressive tactics.
• Noodle Incident: According to Ozpin, the last time Qrow came to him with "good news", it led to a literal wild goose chase that even Summer and Taiyang refuse to speak of.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
  • Jaune himself. He openly states that he's really nothing special on multiple occasions, comparing himself to truly exceptional hunters and huntresses like Qrow or Ruby. The thing is that he spent three years of his life fighting a war across most of Remnant, and while he might not have the style of one of the tournament winners (such as Pyrrha in his old life), he has far more practical, real-world experience and a tendency to fight dirty backing up that he's now in a world where most of the people he knew are ten years younger and less experienced. For example, the highly skilled specialist, Winter Schnee? Whom Weiss looked up to as both a sister and a mentor? When she first meets Jaune, she's twelve.
  • Roman is too strong for the normal police to deal with and gives a good showing against Hunters in training, but against fully trained Hunters, he knows full well he doesn't have a chance.
• No Social Skills: Spending a good chunk of her life on the streets has left Emerald with a few quirks. Anyone that tries talking to her gets either indifference, fear, or annoyance. Jaune is the sole exception. Despite Whitley making it blatantly obvious, she has no idea he has romantic feelings for her.
• Not Just a Tournament:
  • Jaune enters Emerald into a tournament as his public reason for going to Vale. This is his cover for his illicit gang activity, archeological translations, and distrust of Ozpin.
  • Vernal views the Mistral tournament as more than just a chance to fight strong people, it's also a way to get closer to Jaune. Jaune also has other reasons for going to Mistral. Specifically to look for Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha and offer them spots in his school.
• Not Me This Time:
  • Oz suspects that Jaune has something to do with two of the Maidens fighting, given his connection to Raven (who leads the Branwen Tribe, where he suspects that the Spring Maiden lives), and his connection to lots of weird stuff. Except when he asks Qrow what Jaune has been doing for the last 40 minutes, when the fight (and the leadup to it) were happening, Qrow just points the camera next to him where Jaune has been asleep for the last twenty minutes, and then points out that they've been waiting at the airport for the last two hours before that due to a delayed flight.
  • While she couldn't actually care less, Salem's reaction to learning that Watts tried to assassinate Winter using Jaune's Aura machine proves to Jaune that she didn't order it.
• Not Quite Dead: Ruby in the original timeline.
• Not So Above It All: Pyrrha Nikos may be a courteous fighter, but could not resist the temptation to throw Yang Xiao-Long's arrogant pre-tournament words back at the latter's face when the opportunity presented itself.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • After being chewed out by Raven in chapter 61, Jaune has a moment when he realizes the similarity between himself and Ozpin, causing him to finally understand the man's reason for keeping secrets wasn't paranoia or distrust but an overinflated sense of responsibility.
  • In chapter 66, Jaune admits several similarities between himself and Hazel. Both lost someone important to them and blamed Ozpin then made a deal with the devil in order to fix things. According to Jaune, the main difference is he still has people to protect.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Young Jaune tried to tell his family about the scary black-and-red lady who started appearing in his life every so often, but with no evidence they just thought his newest interest was having an imaginary friend. Then she kidnaps him across Remnant out from under their noses, and they're torn between anger at Jaune for running off with a strange woman and anger at themselves for not believing him in the first place.

O - Z

• Obfuscating Stupidity: Lampshaded; Jaune is hoping Ozpin is invoking this when he seems shocked that Salem is willing to send spies into Beacon Academy because the alternative is that Ozpin is so monumentally stupid as to think she wouldn't that they have no hope of winning.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Jaune proving that some things never change. Specialist Foxtrot was dropping hints for nearly a year without him picking up on them and he's one of the only two people that doesn't see Winter Schnee's crush on him, instead thinking it merely an appreciation for his training of her. This results in Winter going to the length of proposing to Jaune at the end of chapter 73.
  • Emerald is outright comically oblivious to Whitley's interest in her. Not even receiving a love poem from him makes her suspect anything. This now also extends to Sun. This is later heartbreakingly deconstructed, when it's revealed that Emerald's obliviousness is not because she's like Jaune, who's just oblivious, she's emotionally broken and doesn't process emotions the same way.
• Odd Friendship: Jaune finds himself getting along surprisingly well with Raven Branwen, James Ironwood, and "Junior" Xiong of all people.
  Raven: (discussing Captain Ironwood) You keep dangerous friends.
  Jaune: Yeah, I don't need the bandit leader turned spring maiden hiding in my bedroom to tell me that.
  Raven: Quite so. Maybe it's you who is the dangerous one.
  Jaune: I certainly don't feel dangerous.
  Emerald: [chokes]
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Jaune gets a nice one when Summer learns that Emerald is fifteen and hasn't gotten the "Birds and the Bees" talk yet. He blames Yang.
    • Summer gets one later when she finds out firsthand that Emerald knows about the Birds and the Bees... it's just that her understanding of it comes entirely from her life on the streets, and involves rape, starvation, and death.
  • A member of Raven's tribe goes from threatening Young Jaune to almost begging him to not tell anyone that he almost stabbed him when he learns the boy's Raven's apprentice.
• One-Man Army: After the White Fang kidnaps Winter, Jaune tears right through them using guns, explosives, and their own weapons against them.
• One-Steve Limit: There being two (not-so-)separate people with the name Jaune causes a little bit of confusion and drama. Ozpin briefly mistakes Nicholas Arc for Jaune Ashari, then has to clarify that yes, he does know someone named Jaune, who is a middle-aged man with Nicholas's basic description, and he isn't harboring Nicholas's missing teenage son. Later Emerald meets the young Jaune, and makes the worst assumptions about the Arc family when she realizes her father originally went by Arc before changing it and won't discuss his family.
• Only Friend: Raven notes that Jaune is the only person she can let her guard down around. Similarly, Jaune, in his own internal monologue, sees her as one of the few people he can share his true goals with or have a conversation with that doesn't bring up horrible memories, isn't a terrible conversationalist, or is a spy for Ozpin.
• Only Sane Man: Adam Taurus seems to be the only member of the White Fang to remember they're fighting for equality, not to capture/kill Jaune Ashari for Hazel and Tyrian.
• Our Time Travel Is Different: Salem sends Jaune back in time by combining the Relic of Creation and Relic of Choice's powers; using the former Relic to create an adult clone of Jaune's body in the past, and the latter Relic to project Jaune's present self's soul into that body. Jaune's body, being made of magic, is dependent on the continued existence of Salem's magic in the alternate timeline to maintain itself.
• Outside-Context Problem: The status quo of the show's canon, of Huntsmen and kingdoms and Maidens and Grimm, is thrown out of whack when a time-traveling refugee from a Bad Future is dropped in the middle of it. Salem, the Big Bad of the setting, is so confounded by Jaune's presence that she mostly puts her canon goals on hold, in favor of figuring out the nature of this unprecedented variable. And she ends up getting the answer wrong in the end, in spite of her future self planting hints, just because the truth is so far outside of context even to her.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: To Taiyang and Qrow's dismay, this is the basis for Jaune's combat prep school.
  Taiyang: They're not thinking outside the box, Summer. There is no box! They have booby-trapped the box. The box is a Grimm in disguise, I swear.
  Summer: You're such a drama queen.
  Taiyang: I'm really not!
  • Perhaps best demonstrated when Qrow and Taiyang ask how the students could have defeated him, and one answer is "tactical airstrike." Other answers include poison gas (because everyone needs to breathe) and a taser (since electricity goes through Aura). The answer they were looking for was "Teamwork." He goes on to lament how they interpreted that, too, after having seen a 1v1 match turn into a 4v4 because both fighters had intended for three of their friends to ambush their opponent.
• Papa Wolf
  • Jaune makes it very clear no one is to ever threaten or harm his adoptive daughter Emerald. When Jaune hires Roman to "send a message" to someone who did just that, Roman remarks what a big mistake it is for anyone to threaten her. While attending a tournament, Alexander Nikos insults Emerald, causing Jaune to warn him that one more remark will see them fighting in the arena.
  • Jaune's own (past) father Nicholas is practically prepared to take Ozpin's head when he gets the impression the latter knows where his missing son is. Too bad he's barking up the wrong tree...
• The Paranoiac: Ozpin comes across as a rare justified example of such, particularly in his paranoia, control freak tendencies, belief that he knows better than anyone else, and belief in conspiracy theories. It's justified because as an immortal being, he genuinely does know better than most people most of the time, there really are people out to get him, and he's actually at the center of several major conspiracies. That being said, he is paranoid of Jaune and desires to get him fully under his control — though there are elements that justify this, such as Jaune interfering in several operations and him being in opposition to Salem.
• Parental Favoritism: Helena makes it quite clear to her sister Pyrrha Nikos that their father, Alexander, has never considered Helena his daughter, but he does consider Pyrrha his. She then hammers it home that the only person whose fault it is is Alexander himself, and that Pyrrha is not to feel bad about that.
• Parents as People:
  • While an excellent combat instructor, Jaune has little idea how to be a good father to Emerald and it shows. He still tries his best and his concern for her wellbeing plays an increasingly prominent role in his thoughts and decisions as time goes.
  • Taiyang and Summer, while being the best parents in the entire setting (as low a bar as that is, given the abundance of orphans (Sun, Nora, Ren, Emerald) or abusive parents (Jacques before he lightened up, Junior's father, Pyrrha and Helena's father, canon Mercury's father, Raven in the abandonment sense, Willow Schnee in the alcoholic sense)), still struggle to deal with their growing daughters. They struggle frequently with how to handle Yang's adolescence, and a recurring subplot is their trying to deal with Ruby's trauma after the Vytal Tournament.
  • Taiyang and Summer know how important their work against Salem is, and how it's important that they need to fight her... but at the same time they want Ruby and Yang to have absolutely no part in that struggle because of how dangerous it is, even compared to normal Hunter work. When Ozpin tries to tempt Yang into joining Beacon two years early, Summer cites her own near-death experience as a reason to not be so hasty to sign up. Finding out that Oz has been trying to recruit Ruby behind her and Tai's backs is a huge blow in her trust of the man.
• Passing the Torch: Defied. Captain Ironwood confesses to Ozpin that Jaune Ashari would make a good Commander of Atlesian Specialists, but won't even bring it up to him, as he respects Jaune's earlier claim to only want to stay a few years, and seems to realize that he has his own goals. Jaune never has any idea of Ironwood's consideration of this.
  • Qrow and Jaune can see the writing on the wall that the real reason Ozpin wants Ruby and Yang to become huntresses (aside from the Silver Eyes thing in the case of Ruby) is so that in a few years, there'll be a new version of Team STRQ to take up the fight against Salem, despite what the current Team STRQ wants.
• Pædo Hunt: Younger Jaune's parents warn him to not get undressed around his fairy godmother Raven. Jaune retorts that he's seventeen and knows all about sex and most kids his age have already had it.
• Peggy Sue: Played with. While Jaune does go back in time, Salem creates a new body for him rather than sending him back to his original body. Young Jaune is still around, and is under the implication that Raven is his fairy godmother. And then she starts training Young Jaune.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Averted. Sky Lark accidentally touches Yang's chest in the ASH Gym's mini tournament, but she doesn't go into any sort of revenge mode or seeks vengeance. That said, this is because they're in the middle of a match, and she takes advantage of his apologizing to hammer him into the ground.
• Pet the Dog:
  • After Winter's assassination attempt, Jacques refuses to blame Jaune for it, rationalizing that if it was an assassination attempt, then it would have happened with or without his involvement.
• Phlebotinum Overdose: Hazel carries canisters of liquefied Dust that he can inject into himself to increase his strength and give himself Elemental Powers. In the original timeline, Jaune observed that he only carried six on him when he could theoretically bring more, always fled after using all six even though he was still formidable, and only used another dose when the previous was wearing off. Based on these things, the heroes deduced that he could only handle that much Dust in one sitting before it became dangerous to him. They're proven to be on the right track in the new timeline, when Hazel uses three at once to try and end his final fight with Jaune. It makes him strong enough to steamroll Jaune, but he screams in pain even through his Semblance, bleeds out of every orifice, and winds up in only slightly better shape than his opponent when it wears off.
• Plausible Deniability: Jaune's revenge on Alabaster Winchester for threatening Emerald is to have Roman steal the exact amount the man extorted from Jaune, making it obvious Jaune got Roman to do it but leaving no evidence at all. Only for the White Fang to attack the man's manor before Roman can.
• Poor Communication Kills: While it doesn't exactly cause any deaths, many of the Emerald's mental issues could have been resolved far earlier had Jaune told her that he considered her his daughter, or even just that he wasn't going to sexually assault her.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Poisoned, exhausted, and battered after defeating the Nuckelavee, Jaune passes out once the threat is over. This leads to Raven finding him, which ends up a major influence on the entire rest of the story.
• Powers Do the Fighting: While fighting Amber, Jaune notes that she has greater mastery over her Maiden powers than Cinder did but less combat sense. Cinder would've ignored her powers in favor of using her bow and swords to hunt Jaune in the dark rather than make herself an obvious target by throwing around fire and lightning while her eyes glowed.
• Pragmatic Hero: Jaune has committed some morally questionable deeds in the name of saving Remnant, the most spectacular example being launching a brutal gang war in Vale in hopes of denying Cinder criminal resources later on.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • The story starts with Salem sending Jaune back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong because she's already dying in the current timeline. If Jaune tries to change the past, he might fail and she might prevail.
  • Most of the gangs and crime families in Vale won't touch the stuff the West City Boyz sell because it tends to kill its users. Jaune notes that smart criminals want repeat customers and relatively safe business and dead bodies are the opposite of both.
    • There's also a reason most of the crime families aren't in a constant state of war with one another — initiating a major gang war in the city would increase negativity, which would draw the attention of Hunters and Grimm. Keeping things "civil" is best for everyone.
  • When Roman robs the ball being held for the Schnees and Jaune, he specifically orders his goons to leave the kids alone. Not just because he doesn't like hurting kids, but because kids aren't likely to have a whole lot of valuables, unlike their parents would. In addition, he orders his men to ignore credit and debit cards, since they'd be cancelled before Roman even left the building.
  • While some of the SDC operations run on what's functionally slave labor, Jacques Schnee is against such conditions as no one would accept his company using actual slavery.
  • Once she concludes he's from an unknown bloodline that survived humanity's near extinction, Salem makes overtures towards Jaune in the belief he doesn't necessarily have to be an enemy and could be useful against Ozpin.
  • Despite capturing the Fall Maiden Pyrrha, taking her prisoner, and intending to deliver her to Salem; Watts and Tyrian still leave her sister and father alive during the attack, if only because Watts knows that killing them will piss Jaune Ashari off even further and make negotiations with him even more tenuous.
  • Salem's end goals apparently boil down to this. She wants to prevent the biosphere extinction which the depletion of Remnant's Dust would cause, and she wants to keep a handful of humanity alive past the destruction of civilization by her hand, but only because she knows that the alternative is her being left alone to undying suffering on an empty planet sooner rather than later.
  • Salem decides against having Ruby killed since the girl's decided not to become a Huntress, effectively removing her from the board.
  • Salem also refrains from doing any gratuitously evil things on occasions when she's captured a host of Ozma. Rather than torturing or killing him, she basically pampers him in a Gilded Cage to keep him alive, and thus trapped and unable to meddle, as long as possible. Good treatment also fosters disagreement between Ozma's personality and his host's, until they combine into one, limiting him in what he can do.
  • Jaune uses this reasoning to explain to Cinder why he's not looking for Ozpin: based on his cover story, if he found Ozpin before Hazel did, he'd have to kill him, meaning Ozpin would go missing again and Jaune's "cover" would be blown.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Summer is a very wholesome person and rarely swears. But she drops some when she sees Raven for the first time in over a decade, and again after the harrowing experience of giving The Talk to Emerald.
  • Cinder doesn't normally curse, in an effort to appear more mature and composed to compensate for being The Baby of the Bunch in Salem's circle. After Jaune painfully removes Salem's mark from her body, her response as Jaune describes it is to channel Vernal.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Years without proper footwear has left Emerald with a distaste for anything on her feet.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Raven sure has this trope down pat:
  Roman: N-Now, now. Let's not-
  Raven: Those who are dead should remain silent. Keep talking and I'll ensure your brain catches up with the fact. Along with the edge of my sword.
• Promotion to Parent:
  • Averted with Yang. Jaune accidentally saving Summer Rose's life meant that Yang didn't have to step in and take care of Ruby as in canon. This made her less troubled but also less mature than in the series.
  • Played straight with Jaune, who takes Emerald in off the streets and raises her as his daughter. This is also deconstructed, as Jaune did this on a whim... and it's clear that he has no idea what he's doing, and it's not helped that Emerald is severely traumatized by her experiences on the streets. It takes until she's fifteen before the two finally say that they love each other due to their own issues.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • After leaving Atlas, Jaune returns to Vale to deal with the city's underworld. Knowing that Salem's agents may want to control Vale's organized crime to undermine Beacon, Jaune tries to preempt that by doing it first to shut them out. Roman laughs himself silly and calls him paranoid when Jaune reveals that as the reason. Obviously he doesn't know that Jaune has good reason to expect it, but it also turns out he predicted correctly — Cinder had been quietly pressuring Roman to serve under her after coming to Vale, but because of Jaune's tipoff he didn't cave.
  • Jaune tells Summer that he isn't ready to come clean to Ozpin about having come from a Bad Future, because if Ozpin hears about a confirmed victory then he will try to reenact it no matter how awful it will be even if he succeeds. At the time it comes off as an excuse at best, but when he does reveal it to Ozpin, he proclaims that he'll do just that. He'll even have Beacon destroyed himself and get one of Ruby's loved ones killed (most likely Yang) as motivation, if that's what it takes to imitate a plan he knows will end Salem forever.
• Psychopathic Manchild
  • Jax, a slaver and revolutionary with a Semblance of mind control who believes that he and Gillian both deserve and are able to Take Over the World, outright throws a tantrum when he learns that Carmine wasn't able to secure Jaune's loyalty. It gets to the point where even his own sister has to yell at him to stop.
  • Omaira hasn't mentally grown at all since she was a child when she became the Summer Maiden. With her apparently godly power she believes she can do whatever she wants and it's her divine right to steal and murder. She's shown living in squalor garnished with children's entertainment, exactly as expected for a kid living alone with no sense of boundary or responsibility.
• Puppet King: Seemingly played straight with Sienna Khan acting as the nominal leader of The White Fang, but always being accompanied and taking cues from Tyrian or Hazel, and by extension Salem.
• Pyrrhic Victory: At the beginning of the story, the heroes win the final battle and Salem is at death's door... but all the heroes save Jaune, and most of the world, are already through it. The cost of this victory is so high that Jaune sees it as barely different from defeat, and when Salem offers him a Deal with the Devil for a chance at a better victory, he takes it. And if Salem is to be believed, the heroes' victory against her would have done little to stave off the end of the world in the long run.
• Rags to Riches: When he first ends up in the past Jaune has nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, his scroll, and Crocea Mors. Four years later he's a millionaire, and a board member of the biggest electronics company in Remnant. Not to mention his various highly-placed connections. This also applies to Emerald, who goes from a street urchin to the daughter of a well-paid Atlesian Specialist to the daughter of a millionaire after Jaune takes her in; same with Vernal, who's a Branwen bandit out on her own in the city and living in a crappy motel room until Jaune adopts her as his second daughter.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: True to Coeur Al'Aran's form, rape is not looked on positively by most of the characters who bring it up. When Jaune and Summer are having "the talk" with Emerald in Chapter 49, hearing about the horrific sexual abuse which she as a street urchin saw being inflicted on others gives both adults an urge to hunt down and exterminate every rapist in Vale. Although the Branwen tribe gleefully attack, plunder, brutalize, kidnap and ransom, raping is a strict no-no in their lot which is punishable by death (although this is a rule which Raven has enforced upon the tribe while she's their leader, rather than a reflection of the tribe's default morality without her). Cinder, being Cinder, has very few moral boundaries, but rape genuinely and absolutely disgusts her.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: After Tyrian fails to kidnap Emerald to use as bait against Jaune, Salem agrees he made the right decision as the girl would have died if he didn't let her go and Emerald's no use to her dead.
• Recruiting the Criminal: In varying capacities, Jaune has enlisted the aid of Junior and the Malachite twins, Roman and Neo, Raven and Vernal, and Emerald.
• Red Herring: At a few points the characters discuss the Summer Maiden, apparently named Samara Sands. She took her responsibility as the Maiden seriously, hiding herself away from civilization to hone her powers and deliberately not interacting with women when possible to have more control of where the power would go upon her death. Last the likes of Ozpin heard, she was grooming a successor to inherit the mantle and kept the girl's identity secret, so her status and/or whereabouts are unknown. When Jaune is sent to Vacuo to track her or her apprentice down, he goes along with it, but he knows that their information is outdated. In spite of her efforts, when Samara died the power didn't go to her candidate, but to a random girl named Omaira, who went on to become a nomadic murderer with a god complex, and there's no chance of convincing her peacefully.
• Reduced to Dust: Jaune turns Amber to dust after stealing her Maiden powers.
• Reflexive Response: When Jaune recognizes Emerald after she tries to pickpocket him, his hand clenches into a fist. Since he's still holding her wrist, he accidentally breaks it.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • The status quo in Vale's criminal underworld works to keep negativity down and profit high. No one expects the small-time Red Ax Gang to escalate a territory dispute into a full-on Mob War.
  • Acting on Raven's advice, rather than keep hiding from a suspicious Ozpin as long as possible, Jaune decides to enter Emerald in a highly-publicized tournament in the middle of Vale, hoping that Ozpin won't look too deeply into him if he's obviously not hiding from them.
  • Tyrian is able to simply walk the streets of Vale and openly kidnap a teenage girl relatively unmolested, because the idea of an internationally wanted criminal strolling through the city in broad daylight committing crimes is so ridiculous that all the bystanders think they must be mistaken about the man's identity or about the girl's reluctance.
  • To defuse a fight between Raven and Summer, Jaune gets between them and essentially tells them that it's Taiyang's job to deal with this and that they need to get their "mutual husband" to dissolve the issue. He then proceeds to distract both of them by telling Summer that Raven sneaks into a fifteen year old boy's room every night, adding on that he has blonde hair like Taiyang. By the end of the conversation, Summer is grossed out, Raven is ready to kill Jaune on the spot, and the fight has actually come to a stop.
  • Summer internally mentions that by choosing time travel as the reason why Jaune is the way he is, him and Raven have chosen a story so unbelievable that it circles back around into being believable.
• Required Secondary Powers: Raven's Semblance comes with a few side effects: she can tell when people she's bonded to are near each other, she can tell when they're in danger, and she can have a vague understanding of their surroundings. The last one in particular stops her from teleporting into a wall or even inside another person.
• Rescue Introduction:
  • Summer first meets Jaune when he heals her from a mortal wound. She then spends the next few years searching for him again to express her thanks, and eventually "adopts" him and Emerald into her extended family.
  • Raven's tribe meets Jaune after he kills the Nucklelavee and he passes out, nursing him back to health because of his strength.
• Rescue Romance: Subverted rather realistically in the original timeline. After Jaune saved Weiss' life in the Battle of Haven, they ended up starting a romantic relationship, which shocked everyone. Unfortunately, because the foundation of their relationship revolved around Weiss "owing" him for saving her life, they didn't last long as a couple and amicably split. They did promise to try again after Salem was defeated, but she died before they could.
• Resignations Not Accepted:
  • Averted. Atlas Specialists sign a contract to not reveal state secrets, but it's clear from the start that it's a job, not a life sentence. Specialists need not be officially military-trained, or even from Atlas (as Jaune, from Vale, and Specialist Foxtrot, from Mistral, are proof), and are free to leave as desired. Although Jaune stays in for eight months longer than he'd planned on due to a request from Captain Ironwood, it's because he honestly doesn't mind helping his boss out, and he uses the extra time to end his relationship with Team November and Winter on good terms. Any griping over the extra work is played for laughs. Ozpin is notably not amused that this trope is averted, as he wanted to talk to Jaune thanks to Jaune's semblance (and other details about him), but Ironwood had accepted Jaune's resignation hours beforehand and the man was long-gone by that point.
  • Played with with Raven. While she's made her intentions clear (including saying that she hates Ozpin to his face and doesn't want to ever work with him again), Ozpin won't leave her alone, constantly trying to get her to return to his service thanks to her mind-bogglingly useful portal semblance, her knowledge of Salem and her forces, and her sheer skill.
• Retcon: The nature of the divine weapon forged from the Relics is first elaborated on in Chapter 103. Jaune claims that the result is an artifact that can destroy anything, and needs to be wielded by someone with silver eyes or else it might just destroy the world (this is one reason Ozpin took an interest in Summer and later Ruby). When it's finally time to storm Salem's tower, we get a different description: an artifact that can summon the Gods if one wishes to, or can impose a fraction of the Gods' judgment on someone, punishing them with death when they are inevitably found lacking. Ruby wasn't given the weapon because of her eyes, but because with her speed she had the best chance of landing the killing blow.
• Retroactive Precognition: Jaune has a lot of knowledge from having come from a Bad Future, but it's not quite as useful as one would think. He's been sent much farther back than he was expecting (and in this case, there's no railroading), so his knowledge of important events is quickly rendered useless. More applicable is his knowledge of people, since he already knows all the important players in the conflict even when their identities, allegiances, and plans are supposed to be secret. This works against him almost as often as in his favor, since he is so secure in his knowledge from his past life that he will ignore evidence contradicting it in this one.
• The Reveal:
  • The near-death Huntress Jaune heals early on is actually Summer Rose.
  • Specialists Foxtrot's real name is Helena Nikos, Pyrrha's older sister who died in the line of duty in the original timeline when Pyrrha was a small kid.
  • The name that Jaune picked for himself, Ashari? As it turns out, that was the name of the kingdom Salem and Ozma ruled together, with the Del'Ashari tribe being the last remaining descendants of it.
  • The reason why Raven left Ozpin's group is because she asked the Relic of Knowledge how to stop Salem, only to be told it was impossible. It is also this moment that drove Lionheart completely insane.
  • The reason why Salem is so determined to wipe out most of humanity is because if all of the reserves of magic left in the world are depleted, the world will break apart and be destroyed. The problem is that Dust is left-over magic, meaning humanity's time is limited as long as Dust is being used. Salem's true goal is to wipe out most of humanity in order to leave a small remnant behind that won't use Dust in order to keep the planet intact.
• Revenge by Proxy: While Adam worries that Blake wants to attend Beacon so she can try to kill Jaune Ashari, he's even more worried that she might go after Emerald.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Jacques confesses to Winter that Jaune must be some sort of master planner, since after Ironwood was cleared, lawyers appearing on Jaune's behalf started suing all the newspapers that slandered Jaune's name. Jacques thinks this is part of Jaune's plan, to sacrifice himself for Ironwood, then have his friends (Rashem's company) come out and clear Jaune's name. While that is what happened, and Jaune is quite good at making plans, he didn't predict the latter part of that and only found out that Rashem founded a company (and that not only were Rashem's lawyers defending him, but Rashem made Jaune a member of the board of directors and that Jaune himself is a millionaire) after all of the legal action had taken place.
  • Ozpin believes that Amber's death means Salem is on the move, especially since Tyrian was spotted relatively close by. While Salem is plotting, Amber had joined forces with her and was killed accidentally by Jaune.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Adam and Winter work together on a plan to use her as a Trojan Prisoner and undermine the White Fang. This includes performing a Deliberate Injury Gambit and preempting his soldiers' betrayal with his own, with the goal of forcing Sienna Khan into a Morton's Fork for trying to dispose of him. All that planning amounts to nothing, because meanwhile Jaune gets word that Winter has been captured, and effectively burns down the organization in one night with help from Raven and her tribe. On the plus side, unlike many examples of this trope, Adam and Winter still get away unharmed (at least less harmed than they intended), largely due to realizing what's happening and wisely staying out of his way.
• Royal Blood: Salem reveals in Chapter 169 that Tyrian is actually descended from a Vacuan king, Philip Callows, who Salem took in after Ozma betrayed him.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: According to Raven, this is the problem with most Huntsmen. They immediately start using their Auras and Semblances as crutches and don't treat them as just another tool in their arsenal as they should, becoming instead the be-all and end-all of how they fight. It's why she's training Young Jaune the way she is and hasn't unlocked his aura yet.
• Sanity Slippage: By the end of his interrogation, Lionheart makes clear that he absolutely lost his mind after learning he couldn't stop Salem. Jaune notes that while it doesn't excuse his actions, it's hard to blame him for losing all hope and sanity after he thought he'd learned that Salem couldn't be stopped at all.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Jaune accepts Salem's Faustian bargain to send him back in time in the hopes that he can prevent the deaths of his teammates, Team RWBY and their other friends and also the decimated future state of the kingdoms from ever happening. He didn't know just how far Salem would send him back...
• Schmuck Bait: Salem counters Jaune's invading army of Huntsmen with a gargantuan Grimm monster emerging from the earth. It's too slow and immobile to be very dangerous, but they can't ignore it and it shrugs off their personal weapons, so Jaune calls in an air strike from Atlas's fleet to kill it. The barrage is moments away when Jaune notices a piece of thrown rock, remembers that the very ground in the Grimmlands is filled with Dust, and yells at everyone to run before it blows sky high. Even so, dozens of Huntsmen are killed or critically injured by this error.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Alexander Nikos isn't worried about his abusive behaviour coming to light due to his connections in the media outlets.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: While it isn't even related to the Kingdom's laws, it's part of Ozpin's laws that everyone stand down since Salem has been weakened and can no longer launch any major attacks with her Inner Circle practically destroyed and instead wait until the next children of war on both sides are rebuilt and prepared. James and Jaune, at least, will not abide that, especially since Jaune's previous "mission" with said soul-parasite has ended with a completely empty "victory" before. Come hell or high water, they will not stop until Salem is defeated, ensuring a true Golden Age.
• Scrub: In-Universe. Alexander Nikos and the team he hired to analyze Pyrrha's opponents declare anything but straight head to head combat to be cowardly at best and outright cheating at worst, including traps, smokescreens, hit and run tactics, and using a Semblance (except for Pyrrha). Multiple characters, including Pyrrha herself, utterly despise him for this attitude.
• Second Place Is for Losers: This is basically the Nikos family's credo except for Pyrrha and Helena.
  • The Schnees also have something like this, though this lessens as Jacques starts to loosen up and become a better father for his kids.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Jaune tells Raven some of his plans for the future and generally tends to let his guard down around her. When she questions this, he responds that he actually doesn't really trust her, but knows she hates both Salem and Ozpin so much that she'd never betray him to either. She later learns of the Bad Future Jaune comes from via Jinn.
  • After agreeing to date, Jaune tells Winter about the Bad Future he came from.
  • After a confrontation alongside Jaune with Watts and Tyrian, Summer has had enough and corners Jaune in Raven's tent, demanding answers, whereupon Raven reveals the truth after Jaune hesitated.
  • Jaune's the only major player who knows that Raven is the Spring Maiden. Ozpin's allies don't know Raven is one at all and come under the impression that Nora is Spring, which Raven does not dispute. Salem's minions find out she is a Maiden, and presume her by process of elimination to likely be Spring, but seemingly reevaluate this to follow Ozpin's lead when he finds Nora.
• Secretly Selfish: When Jaune confronts Ozma at the eleventh hour, he tries again to convince him to let them confront Salem. After a little pressing, Ozma admits that he's already convinced that they can and likely will defeat Salem, and that his raving about how they will doom the world was mostly an excuse. His real reason is that, with Salem dead, his gods-given mission holding him in the living world is done, and despite how his experiences have broken him, he still has the basic human desire not to die. This one was buried so deep that even the character in question was surprised to realize it, having long expected to go the other way in this situation right up until it actually arose.
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • Thanks to her magical abilities, Jinn has been aware of Jaune's status as a time traveller since before he tried to talk to her.
  • As Tyrian reveals in Chapter 142, he realized that Jaune killed Hazel the moment it happened, but never revealed it to Salem because having less allies to share her "love" with is what he wants.
• Secret Test of Character: Jaune decides to test if Cinder is working for Salem yet by having Emerald make Cinder think Vernal's eyes glowed during their match. If Cinder brings it up, she's definitely innocent because she doesn't know what it means. If Cinder attacks Vernal, it means she thinks Vernal is a Maiden and thus Cinder is definitely working for Salem. What actually happens is that Cinder doesn't acknowledge it at all, which could go either way.
• Serious Business: Whitley's and Sun's air hockey game was already unusually serious, but once Yang promises a kiss from Emerald to the winner, the two start treating it like a fight to the death.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: By proxy. Jaune has Emerald promote the "Ashari Specialist Huntsman Gym" — think of it as a Huntsmen-in-training cram school — during her speech after she claimed victory in her first tournament. Unknown to most people, this is actually an Invoked Trope and part of a Batman Gambit to dispel some of Ozpin's suspicions about Jaune, while hopefully also helping as many young Huntsmen- and Huntresses-in-training to Take a Level in Badass for the conflicts looming in the future.
• Shared Family Quirks:
  • Neither Jaune nor his adoptive daughter Emerald can figure out when someone has romantic feelings for them even when the people in question are being rather obvious about it. Emerald, at least, has a level of social skills that a ten-year-old would laugh at, while Jaune has no such excuse.
  • It's apparent from Raven's expansion that Qrow isn't the only one of the twins who likes alcohol.
• Shout-Out: When Weiss and Whitley stay with Jaune and Emerald for a time, Emerald tells them the pecking order.
  Emerald: There's the dirt, Vernal, the Grimm, you, Winter, random people on the street, Yang and Ruby, me, Auntie Summer and then Dad.
• Shower of Awkward: A non-romantic example. Raven teleports into Jaune's bathroom while he's still showering. She immediately walks out, with him getting flustered when he realizes what happens later on. She just finds it funny and says that "Taiyang was bigger."
• Sibling Team: Weiss and Whitley are a lot closer in the new timeline than their canon counterparts were for most of the show. By the time they both join the ASH Gym, both have unlocked their Schnee Semblance and they're comfortable working in a pair against sparring partners.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Jaune speculates that this is what a fight between Emerald and Neo would turn out to be. Whoever attacked first would ensnare their target in an illusion, and then the fight would be over.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Vernal. A trait that others comment on and mock in equal measure, especially since A) she lives in a bandit tribe where swearing is probably the norm already, and B) she does it to make herself seem tough. Qrow considers it a very large red flag when she drops the habit in favor of bashful mumbling whenever Taiyang says something nice to her.
• Slave to PR:
  • Jacques Schnee is revealed to pay a very generous stipend to the four main Huntsman Academies in pursuit of good publicity. When Emerald mentions Winter positively in a speech advertising Jaune's new Huntsman-Prep Gym, Jacques immediately set up a possible sponsorship to the gym, as well as a ball in honor of Emerald and Winter's respective victories. The SDC couldn't afford not to publicly support it.
  • The Nikos Family Patriarch has firm views on victory and being the best, and will physically, and verbally attack anyone who he believes to be tarnishing the family image. After Emerald beats Pyrrha in the finals of her first tournament, he demands Emerald forfeit and threatens legal action when Jaune refuses to be intimidated. Bonus points for him knowing that any case he makes won't stand up in court, and just wanting to call the legitimacy of the fight into question to tarnish the upstart Ashari's reputation.
  • Averted heavily by Jaune, who was willing to bear the brunt of the public outrage over a White Fang terrorist attack in order to better Ironwood's public image.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Jaune is willing to make deals with criminals if it suits his goals and even employs Roman Torchwick himself under his command. When he has to deal with a gang of human traffickers, however, he mercilessly wipes them all out in a single strike and doesn't feel all that guilty about that. As soon as Jaune hears that Jax is enslaving the winners of their fight club to serve as the Crown's loyal soldiers, he resolves to take them down.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Yang really, really annoys Emerald. She would call the blonde her "nemesis", but Emerald refuses to dignify her with such a moniker as a matter of principle. This is then dropped once Vernal enters the frame. She feels largely the same about Winter, though is warming up to her slowly. Though not helped that Winter kissed her father — she drops her opinion of Winter down to below that of the Grimm.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • Jaune meets, befriends, and leaves the Del'Ashari tribe of nomads in Chapter 2, and they haven't appeared since. However, that brief experience gives him the surname he adopts for the rest of his life (which turns out to be more significant than he expected), and crosses his path with one Summer Rose, just in time for him to make one of the most important changes of his new life.
  • The Nuckelavee Grimm. It's taken out by the end of Chapter 4 to demonstrate how much of a badass Jaune has become in the future, as well as establishing that Jaune is aware of Ren and Nora's current whereabouts. However, its true importance comes from the fact that defeating it causes Jaune to pass out; when he wakes up, he's in Raven's camp — establishing two of the fic's main relationships between Jaune, Raven, and Vernal, as well as setting him up for conflict with Qrow and getting him on Ozpin's radar.
• Smug Super: Vernal antagonizes just about anyone she meets who's short of Raven in the strength department and rubs her capabilities in their faces. And as a Branwen bandit who in the original timeline became Raven's subordinate, she can back up every single one of her boasts and taunts, much to the frustration of those who have the pleasure of making her acquantance — her physical capabilities already far outclass the other ASH Gym members when she starts there, including Emerald.
• Sole Survivor: Jaune. It's the reason he decided to accept Salem's offer. Ultimately Subverted when he is sent back to barely after he left. Jinn helpfully informs Jaune that he rushed to judgment too quickly in the first chapter, and Ruby is dying but not quite dead yet. He quickly moves to fix that before she finishes bleeding out.
• Someone to Remember Him By: When it becomes clear that Jaune will vanish soon, one of Winter's thoughts after getting up to speed is that she'd like to try for this. They succeed, and by the time Jaune is gone Winter is pregnant... along with Raven, thanks to their one threesome night that Winter set up.
• Sore Loser:
  • Pyrrha's father demands Jaune have Emerald forfeit the tournament for her "dishonorable trickery" (using her Semblance) to win... when Pyrrha very clearly used her own to get out of a trap Emerald set before that. When Jaune refuses, the man threatens to bring him to court over it.
  • Qrow acts this way when Jaune beats him the first time, claiming that he cheated for throwing dirt in his eyes. He eventually gets over this and not only becomes good friends with Jaune, but starts adopting some of the underhanded methods of fighting Jaune espouses (which Jaune had learned from his Qrow). There was a good reason for him to be sore about it, though. Jaune being selected as Raven's champion and beating Qrow basically meant that Qrow couldn't try to get his sister back to team STRQ again, and proved to him that his sister had moved on from her former life in Vale completely.
• Sound-Only Death: The only bit of detail we get from Gillian's death is her scream.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • An interesting case, as it involves an original character. Helena Nikos was Pyrrha's older sister, but she died when Pyrrha was a child and thus never came up in canon. It's strongly implied that in canon, she (in her Foxtrot persona with the rest of the Specialist team) came upon Tyrian and were all killed. In this story, though, Jaune was with the team and as a result, Tyrian was driven back and the team survived. Helena proceeds to play a major role in Pyrrha's development.
  • One of the first things Jaune does is heal Summer's mortal wound, meaning she survives. In canon, the most we got to see of her was the occasional flashback, her gravestone or Team STRQ's old team photograph.
  • A fair portion of Ren and Nora's hometown survives thanks to Jaune, whereas in canon they were the only two to make it out.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Raven would've been perfectly fine with staying neutral and avoiding Salem's war completely if Young Jaune hadn't accidentally said some surprisingly mature words about the nature of cowardice.
  • Salem's agents had a pretty good trap set up to catch Jaune using Ren and Nora as bait. Even Raven's really annoying Semblance would have been of little help... normally, anyway. They weren't expecting Raven to have a bond with two random orphans she'd never met, but thanks to a recent use of the Relic of Knowledge, she does, and she rescues the two of them in a matter of minutes without getting (older) Jaune involved at all.
  • After Leo put her in harm's way on Salem's behalf with an ambush meant to kill her (which it did in the original timeline), Jaune accidentally saved Summer's life by pure coincidence.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Even though "Specialist" is a well-known rank for Atlesian Special Forces, among the White Fang Jaune is known as "The Specialist," because he fought both Hazel and Tyrian at the same time, driving them off (with Summer's help, but that tends to get downplayed).
• Spit Take: Downplayed. Winter starts choking on some wine before letting some dribble out when her father tells her that he would very much approve and actually strongly suggests that she and Jaune end up marrying.
• Stage Mom: To say Pyrrha's father is a bit obsessed with bringing victory to Nikos name through her success is like saying the Grimm is a mild inconvenience to Remnant's human and faunus population.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Jaune and Ruby in the averted future. He realized in hindsight that their relationship was probably heading in that direction when the story's Downer Beginning left him the Sole Survivor of the war against Salem.
• Start of Darkness:
  • For Jacques Schnee it was his and Winter's falling out that ultimately turned him into the cold, callous person he is. With Winter's return to the family and the two slowly repairing their relationship he's beginning to turn himself around.
  • Blake has started down a much darker path than her canon self when her father is murdered in custody by Atlas.
• Stations of the Canon: Subverted — for some reason, Jaune expected to have been sent back just far enough to attend Beacon again with team JNPR and relive the timeline that way, but he eventually learns he was actually sent back ten years before he ran off to join Beacon, and he very quickly starts to alter the timeline just by being there, starting with saving Summer Rose without even realizing it. By the time the new timeline reaches the beginning of canon, too much has changed from Jaune's actions for any major canon events to take place beyond the students of Beacon attending it "again", and even that much only barely resembles the original timeline.
• Statuesque Stunner: Winter is even taller than Jaune (who's over six feet tall) and is considered by most to be drop dead gorgeous.
• The Stoic: Jaune, shockingly enough. Ozpin describes him as 'one of the least expressive individuals he's ever dealt with'. Downplayed in that it's clear that Jaune only comes across as this because he's on guard around Ozpin otherwise he's as expressive as anyone else.
• Strawman News Media: Alexander Nikos outright says that he has friends in the media, which means that if Helena tries to spread bad things about him, he'll have them quashed quickly. This is made more apparent in chapter 48, when Leonardo Lionheart is completely unaware that Pyrrha has ever lost a match, despite her having lost the tournament in Vale to Emerald. Jaune speculates that it's because they've heavily glossed over her losses in her home country.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Jaune looks almost identical to his father Nicholas, enough for Ozpin to mistake the two when Nicholas comes looking for Young Jaune. In turn, when the Nicholas and Jaune themselves meet, Nicholas is struck totally speechless because he's sure there must be a blood relation he wasn't aware of. When he visits Argus, his unknowing sister Saphron pushes him harder on this point, suggesting he get a DNA test. Meanwhile, toddler Adrian can't be convinced that Jaune isn't his "Ganpa".
• Stunned Silence: Ozpin is immortal, and has seen countless things in his long life. He's still rendered momentarily speechless at one of Raven's portals opening in his office and dropping off a blood-soaked Jaune and the Menagerie Negotiation Team, accompanied by Raven herself.
• Sure, Let's Go with That:
  • When Raven is grievously injured for rescuing Ren and Nora, Qrow assumes she was only looking for her own interests, which lead him to believe Nora is the Spring Maiden. As Raven strongly values her independence, she goes along with it. Doubles as a Mythology Gag because she did canonically use a decoy.
  • When Salem comes to believe that Jaune has her mark because he's a descendent of an Ashari line that survived the Brother Gods' destruction of Remnant, Jaune chooses to play into this misconception in order to earn her trust and figure out her motives.
• Suspect Is Hatless: Summer's description of Jaune consists primarily of blonde hair and blue eyes. While accurate, it is so common and simple a description that Ozpin notes many men fit that description, including Summer's own husband.
• Sweet Tooth: Emerald adores anything sweet and sugary due to never having had a chance to taste any as a street urchin.
  • Ruby has her canon love of cookies. Summer apparently can't cook anything except cookies.
• Take a Third Option:
  • There are two main factions in a secret war to control Remnant: Salem's faction, and Ozpin's. Jaune hates Salem because she's Queen of the Grimm, but he also doesn't like Ozpin because following him led to the Bad Future where Salen was defeated at the cost of all of his friends' lives, so he's determined to save the world his own way.
  • When Nora and Ren are captured by Watts, Jaune can't leave them there because they'll die of they're not rescued, but he also can't rescue them because it would confirm that Jaune cares about them and they would become even bigger targets. Instead, Raven takes Young Jaune and they rescue the kids themselves without his involvement.
• Take That!: In chapter 116, Jaune makes a crack about the "flat Remnant theorists", obviously taking a shot at the real-world flat Earth theorists.
• Taking the Heat: Atlas Specialist Ashari pulls this on a very unwilling and highly annoyed Captain Ironwood in order to ensure he will still be promoted to General, as well as out of genuine respect for the man.
• The Talk: In Chapter 49, fifteen year old Emerald finally gets the talk and it's equal parts hilarious and horrifying as she already knows about sex, but only in terms of prostitution and rape, and doesn't remotely understand romance or relationships.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Summer manages to get Emerald to warm up to her via ice cream.
• Taught by Experience:
  • For the most part, Jaune was only ever taught the basics of fighting. Everything else he either figured out on his own or by fighting people, such as learning how to fight dirty from fighting Qrow.
  • Raven begins teaching young Jaune in much the same way: fighting him until he learns what to do.
  • Even without Jaune's warning, Emerald would still be suspicious of Cinder because her time on the streets taught her to be wary of anyone who smiles like they do.
• Teacher/Student Romance:
  • Played With. While not really the case, Winter Schnee's crush on her private combat instructor is obvious enough to make people wonder. Especially because Age-Gap Romance angle and the fact she looks of age despite being only 15 make it a particularly juicy bit of gossip in-universe. It doesn't help that Jacques is angling for an arranged marriage between Jaune and Winter, to the latter's embarrassment.
  • This is averted by Jaune in chapter 45, after Winter kisses him. He openly states that because of his responsibilities and his enemies, he's not willing to get into a relationship.
• Team Mom: Summer is this for her family, even the adopted ones like Jaune and Emerald. Emerald even refers to her as "Auntie Summer."
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Qrow and Taiyang, subbing in for Jaune at his school, ask the students what would have allowed the students to win against the two of them. The answer they were going for was "Teamwork." What they got was "Poison gas," "Taser," and Qrow has to cut off the person who was about to suggest a tactical airstrike.
• The Tease: Raven Branwen if you happen to be in that small fragment of Remnant's population she's comfortable enough to joke around with. Currently that only includes Jaune, but may have included Taiyang at one point. She's like what Yang would be like if older, less kid-friendly and without her father's love for puns.
• That Man Is Dead: After learning about the previous timeline, Raven says this on behalf of everyone from the original timeline, telling Jaune to stop treating everyone he meets like their old selves.
• There Are No Coincidences: During the initiation at Beacon, Yang and Emerald are launched in opposite directions and both land near a relic^note The first two people to touch any given relic are automatically made partners, basically guaranteeing they wouldn't become partners, while Young Jaune lands right near Emerald.. Jaune notes that it could be a coincidence, in the sense that flipping a quarter ten thousand times could result in it landing on heads each time. The following chapter confirms that Raven asked Ozpin to put Emerald and Young Jaune on a team with Nora and Ren.
• Think Nothing of It: Deconstructed. Jaune tries to say this regarding saving Summer's life, only to be told it means a great deal unless he thinks Summer's life is worthless.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Initially, Roman decide to save Emerald from Tyrian to score points with Jaune. Once he realize he'll have to fight Tyrian, he calls for backup and asks that they save him too.
• This Is Reality:
  • One of Team November suggests they'll have only a limited time frame to get out of a facility after they place the last bomb, but Charlie corrects them that they're not in a movie and are using remote detonators.
  • Jaune chides himself for thinking a room in a ruin would trap anyone who entered it or that a monster would pop out of a sarcophagus, thinking to himself that he needs to stop thinking he lives in an action movie.
• Three-Way Sex: One of the last things Jaune does in the new timeline is resolve his Unresolved Sexual Tension with Raven, which Winter set up and eventually gets dragged into.
• Time Skip: The story, in between major events, tends to jump forward weeks, months, or years. Most of Jaune's three-year Atlas Specialist career is done offscreen, and that's just one example. This is also done to compress periods of time where not much of interest happens as it would be rather dull to hear how Jaune taught at the Gym and had the students do the same exercises again and again and again.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Discussed throughout the story, once Raven learns that Jaune is a time traveller — he did technically throw away a final victory against Salem, no matter how pyrrhic it was, for the chance of saving the handful of people that died in the final fight. Ozma in particular is pissed about this when he finds out. Ultimately, Jaune concludes that it was absolutely a selfish and irrational decision and one he doesn't think anyone should repeat — but he doesn't regret it either, as the family and friends he made in the new timeline plus the changes for the better he made to some of his old friends' counterparts' lives (like preventing Ruby, Yang and Tai losing Summer) are Worth It. In the end, the whole thing is rendered moot when it's explicitly confirmed that the first timeline still exists as its own universe separate from the new timeline after Jaune went back, and Jaune is ultimately sent back to the original universe so he can save it as well.
• Together in Death: In the final chapter, Jinn reveals that the Gods have finally let Salem and Ozma rest in the afterlife, and they're now both together and happy after all they endured. She also promises Jaune that he and his own family will be reunited in the afterlife after their respective eventual deaths, stating that even if Jaune is now back in his original timeline, "all roads lead to the same destination".
• Token Good Teammate: Adam Taurus becomes one of the few members of the White Fang who actively try to avoid pointless casualties and who is willing to negotiate with humans when needed, something that Winter notes when she makes her Menagerie report to her father. By the time of Winter's capture, he's actively helping to take the Fang down.
• Touché: When Hazel gets stabbed in the back by Raven opening up a portal, the sound hidden under the cover of Jaune's smoke bomb, he laughs and admits the tactic was clever, accepting his impending death and telling Jaune the battle was well-fought.
• Tranquil Fury: During his meeting with Lionheart, Jaune crosses his arms in front of his chest. It gives off the appearance of looking relaxed while hiding the fact that he's grabbing his own arms as tight as possible to stop himself from reaching for a weapon and killing him on the spot.
• Trapped in Villainy:
  • The only reason Adam sticks with the White Fang is because Blake is being effectively held as a hostage against him. Still, he tries his best to hold back if possible.
  • One of the reasons Kali hasn't kicked the White Fang out is because if she did, Blake would leave with them (or Blake would be killed).
• Tragic Time Traveler: Jaune "Ashari" is a future version of Jaune sent back in time through a deal he made with Salem, who, near death's door, decided to send him back to try and get some sort of victory by having his presence cause ripples in the timeline. While his presence does balance out with both positive and negative ripples, the amount of trauma and pain the guy goes through cannot be denied, and it's only thanks to the positive influence of the people he's helped preventing him from falling into despair.
• Trauma Button: Seeing Amber crumble to dust triggers Jaune and brings him back to Pyrrha's death over a decade prior.
• Troubled Child: Emerald can be seen as this at times. Expressing non-hostile emotions and connecting with other people are things she actively avoids, but she seems to be getting better... mostly.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Besides her casual cursing, Emerald violently attacks anyone she sees as a threat. Despite only being at Atlas when Jaune has a mission, Emerald still gets in enough fights that Jaune knows the way to the principal's office by heart, once telling Summer that it's his third visit there that month.
  • It's so bad that Ironwood and Greening, having only known Jaune and Emerald for a few minutes, begin asking pointed questions about her, trying to determine if she was abused or not. Jaune admits that he picked her up in Vale, and was planning to keep her around.
  • At one point, she was so terrified that Jaune would leave her that she insisted he stay with her until she fell asleep... when she was fourteen years old.
• Tsundere: Vernal is a non-romantic example towards Jaune. Because he actually trained her rather than simply beating her until she got better, Vernal latched on to him and is distraught when he simply leaves the Branwen tribe. Despite all the trouble she gives Jaune (enough that he knows she's talking about him when she yells "Fuck face"), chapter 45 shows Vernal is incredibly jealous of Emerald and wishes she was Jaune's adoptive daughter instead.
• Unexpected Virgin: Jaune shocks Team November with this revelation. To be fair, bloody crusades for the fate of the world tend to take precedence over teenage hormones (though he admits that he doesn't have an excuse for his first love other than just not seeing it before she died). Almost immediately undone when Foxtrot confesses her secret crush on him and makes a move later on that very same night.
• Unflinching Walk: Invoked by Jaune in his first appearance under his new enforcer persona after blowing up a rival's base with all of their leaders inside. Works to leave an impression on Junior's goons.
• Unishment: Emerald, on her first day, beat up someone who tried to bully her, so they put her in isolation to think about what she'd done. By the third straight day of her doing this, the teachers figured out that she actually preferred isolation to being around the other students, not helped when Emerald decided to get a leg up on it by just randomly attacking people.
• Unknown Rival: Alexander Nikos seems to see Jaune as pretty much his archenemy ever since his daughter lost to Emerald in a tournament 3 years ago while Jaune doesn't consider the man as even a threat and as much as just something in his way to getting to Pyrrha.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Downplayed. Many Huntsmen don't bother to learn how to fight defensively and simply let their Aura soak up attacks rather than try to dodge or block. It's why Raven is training Young Jaune the way she is — to avoid that particular flaw.
• Unstoppable Rage: Upon learning Tyrian kidnapped Emerald, Jaune flies into a rage against Hazel, fighting far more ferociously than before.
• Unwitting Pawn: Blake is one for the White Fang. She honestly believes in the White Fang's message, but Sienna, Tyrian, and Hazel are really only keeping her on and in the loop because it allows them access to Kali Belladona and for someone to keep an eye on Adam. They send her to lure Jaune into a trap which would have two likely outcomes: either Jaune is captured, and she's brought deeper into the Fang by seeing herself useful to a high ranking member (Hazel) or Jaune escapes, probably after killing all the Mooks, which would include her. This could be spun to turn Kali completely against Atlas and drive Menagerie to war. And even though she's heavily wounded and gets away, she's still useful as leverage — Sienna and Hazel all but openly state that if Adam doesn't play ball with them, they'll kill Blake (with Kali implying that she's in a similar position of she doesn't play ball).
• Verbal Business Card: After revealing his past as a time-traveler to Summer Rose, he announces himself like this in order to assure them he will not work for Salem.
  I'm Jaune Arc, leader of Team JNPR, partner of Pyrrha Nikos, first friend of Ruby Rose and ex-boyfriend of Weiss Schnee.
• Vicariously Ambitious:
  • While not the main reason behind her drive to win her first tournament, Emerald doesn't want to lose because Jaune personally trained her and feels that her defeat would reflect poorly on him.
  • Same thing with Winter before her, who wanted to win the Vytal Festival Tournament in Atlas to bring recognition to her mentor.
  • Vernal wants to win the Mistral tournament thanks to Jaune's belief in her... and to try to get Jaune to accept her in his life.
• Villain Has a Point: Jaune internally admits Sienna isn't wrong that the White Fang tried to change the world peacefully and no one listened.
• Villainous Breakdown: "Villain" might be a strong word, but Amber remains confident in her ability to beat Jaune and doesn't hesitate to taunt him right up to the point where he starts to suck out her powers, at which point she starts screaming and begging for her life.
• Villain Respect: As he's dying, Hazel simply commends Jaune for a well fought battle, a sentiment which Jaune returns before landing the killing blow.
• Villain's Dying Grace: One of the villains in their final moments chooses to help out the heroes that opposed them. Mortally wounded, Salem, in an act of empathy for Jaune and Emerald, uses the last of her magic to give Jaune an extra several weeks of life before his body fades away.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Yang and Emerald. Yang enjoys needling Emerald who replies in kind, but both are still each other's best friends (though in Emerald's case, this isn't saying much). It helps that both hate Vernal more than each other.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Several members of the West City Boyz proudly display vicious looking knives, but also display their lack of skill by strapping them on the wrong side of their body and in one case, strapping it to their boot.
• We Can Rule Together: Salem (jokingly?) tries this angle with Jaune when they talk for the first time in the new timeline. She offers him Ozma's long-vacant place at her side as rulers of a revived Ashari kingdom when she inevitably scours the world, and even offers to give him magical longevity so he can outlive Winter and eventually become single again. He hangs up after both these offers. Summer, listening in, goes into nervous hysterics at the idea of the Queen of all Evil wanting a booty call.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: The approval of the only parental figure she'd ever known matters a lot to Emerald. Their first argument came about because Jaune preemptively tried to cheer her up regarding her tournament fight against then-darkhorse competitor Pyrrha Nikos. Unaware of his reasons for it, Emerald misconstrued this as his lack of real trust in her and her skills, which hurt her a lot.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Jaune has a panicked moment of this when he wakes up after a night drinking with Raven in her tent. They didn't do it. Jaune fell asleep slumped on her desk while she collapsed in her cot.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 46 reveals what's happened to Ren and Nora. They've been taken in by Arthur Watts.
  • Chapter 87 has two massive ones.
    • It is revealed that Amber is the Maiden Raven fought previously and that she has joined Salem.
    • Despite the fact it is supposed to be impossible, Jaune has somehow stolen the power of the Fall Maiden, though he can't use it.
  • Chapter 90: Jaune accidentally makes Pyrrha the Fall Maiden.
  • Chapter 99: Leo reveals his true colors and spikes Ozpin's drink with a paralyzing agent, then shoots him.
  • Chapter 137: Jaune gives Cinder the Summer Maiden powers, and in return Cinder reveals that Watts intends to betray him.
  • Chapter 140: Watts sabotages Pietro’s test of his Aura Collector while Winter’s still inside, and by the time they get her out, her heart has stopped beating.
  • Chapter 156: Desperate to maintain the Status Quo of Remnant, Ozpin warns Salem herself of an impending threat via a group hoping to use the Relics to bypass her immortality.
• Wham Line:
  • A jaw dropping one in Chapter 33:
  And since when did [Raven] have two routes to Jaune?
  • Early on, when the woman that Jaune healed is asked her name, she replies "Summer Rose."
  • For Jaune, when he asks the seven-year-old pickpocket his name, "Sun Wukong," was not what he was expecting.
  • A letter sent to Jaune contains this sign-off: Salem, Queen of the Ashari.
  • One right at the end of chapter 87:
  Amber: Impossible, only a woman can inherit this power. It's not possible!
  • Then there's the end of chapter 89, where Pyrrha's been forced to take part in a once-off tournament for women under the age of thirty.
  • This one in chapter 108 as Jaune finally explains his current plan to Raven.
  Raven: So you're trying to find Hazel?
  Jaune: No. I'm going to kill him.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: As a child, Emerald's only concept of affection was of rape or prostitution. When Summer and Jaune try to explain romantic relationships to her, she immediately becomes nervous and defensive around Sun and Whitley, equating their crush on her to a desire to possess and control her.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: For the duration of the story, Mercury Black and Maria Calavera remain the only major characters whose status in the new timeline have not been discovered or mentioned, beyond it being made clear that Mercury and Cinder never met in the new timeline. Word of God jokingly suggested that after the fateful duel with his father, Mercury managed to seek medical attention at a village and is living a relatively normal life.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jaune calls Qrow out for stopping him from killing Omaira when she was at his mercy even though Jaune had already made it clear that she was a delusional nutcase who couldn't be talked down.
• What You Are in the Dark: Jaune encounters Emerald when he visits Vale the first time. He very briefly considers killing her to get her out of the way and to deny Cinder Fall an asset, but he comes to the conclusion that he can't kill someone who hasn't done anything wrong in this life, spares her, and takes her in.
• White Sheep: Helena to the Nikos family, who chose to become an Specialist in Atlas just to get away from Mistral and her victory-obsessed father.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Adam and Winter each remark that there's no way Sienna would announce that the White Fang has captured Winter before she actually arrives. In the previous chapter, Sienna did just that.
• Wild Card:
  • Jaune Ashari has become this: he is opposed to Salem, yet refuses to work for Ozpin, leaving him with his own set of goals, plans, and morals. As of now, through trickery, kindness, and straight up threats, he's managed to convert Emerald, Raven, Vernal, Winter, Adam, Roman, Neo, and Junior to his side. Meanwhile, Summer and Ironwood are starting to come around, Oobleck has been helping his cause without realizing for a long time now, Ren, Nora, and Sun are still loyal to him even though they're not helping him, and, through Raven, Young Jaune is also dedicated to his cause.
  • Tyrian Callows, despite his clear attachment and devotion to Salem, is also not afraid to go his own way when he wants. As he details to Jaune, if Salem has less allies, then he gets more of her attention and love, so he's perfectly fine with Jaune killing Hazel and Watts as long as he gets Salem's attention.
• Wine Is Classy: Averted by Jaune and Raven. They casually drink a whole bottle of fancy wine left over from his mansion's previous owners while sprawled out on a couch and discussing criminal plans.
  • Played straight when Jaune and Junior meet the leaders of the Union 46 gang.
• Womanchild: Emerald and later Vernal have an odd duality between this trope and the Troubling Unchildlike Behavior they display otherwise. Hardened, ruthless, and slow to trust as they are, having a normal family relationship is novel to them — something they missed out on in their early years, and which they have no problem indulging in later than is considered normal. Summer, Taiyang and Qrow all bemoan that Yang got more distant and less tolerant of affection as she got older (Ruby not as much), meanwhile Emerald will still hug and cuddle with Jaune or sit on Summer's lap like an elementary schooler. Vernal applies her normal arrogance and aggression to boasting about how her dad took her to a water park, tucked her in with a bedtime story, and made her a nutricious breakfast.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child:
  • Upon meeting Emerald for the first time, Jaune briefly considers killing her in order to prevent her future crimes. He quickly realizes how messed up that would be and decides to adopt Emerald instead.
  • One of the rules Roman tries to live by is that he can attack adults all he wants, but draws the line at hurting kids. He's disgusted when he hears Jaune's description of what the White Fang plan to do to the students of Beacon. That is, drain their energy using the Aura-Siphoning Machine and create super soldiers — not the real reason, but one Jaune thought up to explain the White Fang's interest in Beacon.
  • Emerald mentally reflects that Jaune is a mixed version of this. While he's perfectly willing to kick a child's ass in training, he has never, ever raised a finger towards her outside of that.
  • Traitor though she may be, Amber can't bring herself to just wipe out a stupid kid for getting in the way, especially when he's clearly not a threat. Or so she thinks.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • When captured by the White Fang, Winter provokes one of her captors into hitting her, thinking to herself that obvious signs of abuse during a ransom demand or propaganda piece would harm their cause.
  • Played with. Adam allows another White Fang member to injure him so he can claim they tried to kill him and he heroically fought them off. While true, he needs the injuries so Sienna can't paint him as a traitor.
• Xanatos Gambit: Sending Blake after Jaune can only end one of two ways, both of which end well for Sienna: if Jaune dies, one of the biggest threats to the White Fang is gone for good, but if Blake dies, she can use them as a martyr killed by an "angry human" during "honest negotiations". It's only thanks to Raven's interference, which there was no way of predicting, that both Jaune and Blake survive their encounter.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Some gangs, such as the West City Boyz, use this in an attempt to seem cool, but every other gang just thinks it makes them look like idiot children.
• Yandere: Emerald is a non-romantic example. She outright swore to kill anyone who tries to take her adoptive father away from her.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: After more than ten years in the new timeline, Jaune snaps back to the original to find that a matter of seconds have passed since Salem sent him away. Crucially, this means that when he gets a second opinion from the omniscient blue coroner lady about the state of his friends circa the first chapter, he has time to act on that knowledge.
• You and What Army?: When Adam declares his intention to kill all the other White Fang recruits and bring Winter to Sienna himself, Perry sceptically quotes this trope. Adam simply replies "Her army." and then watches Winter's team slaughter the faunus from a distance.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Jaune frequently tells his students that they are much stronger than he was at their age. They frequently disbelieve him.
  • Jaune lays out to Vernal that at the age she is at and with the training she has, Vernal is much stronger than Raven was at her age, because Raven and Qrow were sent off to Beacon to learn how to fight Huntsmen, and Vernal is at least as good as a first year Huntsman already.
• You Are in Command Now: As he lays dying from Leonardo's poison, Ozpin mentally declares that Jaune is in charge of keeping Vale safe until he is able to return.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • Inverted by both Junior and Roman. They each gave several of their subordinates a bonus after they had failed. Justified in that they both believe loyalty should be rewarded, and the act of even trying to fight an opponent like Jaune Ashari meant that the mooks in question must be near-suicidally loyal.
  • Averted with Jacques. He congratulates Winter on what little success she had in the Menagerie Negotiations, openly stating that he won't punish her for trying to do something clearly impossible.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Just like in the original timeline, as soon as Salem's group no longer has any use of Lionheart they throw him away.
• Younger Than They Look:
  • Puberty was generous enough with Winter that she could easily pass off as 18 at 15. Jaune notices how it was the opposite for her sister Weiss, who looked as old as Ruby when she was in fact two years older when they went to Beacon.
  • Jaune is noted by Ozpin to look like he's at least 35 despite being in his late twenties, due to the stress of his lifestyle.
• You Owe Me: A reoccurring theme in Jaune and Raven's relationship. No, not those kinds of favors, though Raven does like to tease him over it.
  • According to this trope, Raven claims she owns Jaune's couch. She's apparently serious about it. She might have a lesser claim on one of Jaune's guest bedrooms but she's less insistent on that one.
  • Weiss claims she owes Raven a debt for evacuating her sister from Menagerie, and despite Jaune's mental protests, she accepts.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Watts sabotages the test of the Aura power machine, resulting in Winter having all her Aura pulled out and her soul with it. Jaune retaliates by doing the same to Watts.
• Your Tradition Is Not Mine: Helena Nikos wanted nothing to do with her family tradition of prize fighters and Huntsmen, and for good reasons, so she instead moved to another Kingdom and joined the military. Subverted when she returned home to help train Pyrrha, if only to spare her little sister the worst of it.

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