Origin Story RWBY (Fanfic) - TV Tropes (2024)

"Come one, come all, to witness the super duper cool, hyper epic mega-amazingly awesome origin story of Ruby Rose, soon to be Remnant's greatest superh̶e̶r̶o̶!

Huh. That was odd.

Let's try that again – Remnant's greatest superh̶e̶r̶o̶!

Remnant's greatest superh̶e̶r̶o̶!

Um.

Remnant's…

Greatest…

Super…

He̶r̶o̶!

Origin Story is a RWBY fanfiction story currently being written by RatCrimes.

After a freak accident results in Qrow Branwen's death, a severely-ill Professor Ozpin is faced with Salem making moves and no spy to keep an eye on her. He chooses to take advantage of the situation and replace Qrow with his niece Ruby, sacrificing himself to secure her a place within Salem's inner circle to serve as his double agent. However, this dangerous new path takes a toll on Ruby's physical and mental health and as she rises within Salem's circle she falls from the path of heroism she sought, losing her connections to the life she once knew and forced to embrace a new way of life that slowly but inexorably drives her down the path of the villain she is perceived to be by everyone around her.

This fic has examples of:

• Accidental Murder: While throwing a fit after losing her chance at a spot in Beacon over a bout of illness passed on to her by Jaune, Ruby accidentally sets off Crescent Rose by dumping it too roughly onto a desk. The bullet ricochets off of a buzzsaw hanging on the wall and hits Qrow in the neck. This horrific event understandably traumatises Ruby and instils in her a lingering sense of guilt.
• Affably Evil: Downplayed, but present.
  • Salem is more open to being reasoned with than in canon.
  • Hazel Rainart is more bloodthirsty and villainous than his canon counterpart but remains the most genial and cordial member of Salem's inner circle (although this could have more to do with Ruby killing Ozpin).
  • Roman Torchwick, although a career criminal with a racist bent in league with an evil witch and her minions, does offer good advice, care for his closest allies and is unaware of the full ramifications of his work with Cinder and her organisation.
• Amicable Exes: Taiyang and Raven, to an extent. He does get in touch with her to discuss Qrow's death and is confident enough to leave with her after their fight that he assures Ruby that she won't hurt him.
  • The way the author put it, "He rizzed his way to safety off screen."
• Angry Guard Dog: When the Hound isn't off on some mission or experiment for Salem, it is this.
• Anti-Hero: Ruby Rose. While she starts off as her All-Loving Hero self from canon, she quickly shoots down to Pragmatic Hero as a direct result of her circ*mstances requiring her to take on a Greater Good mentality and perform increasingly evil actions due to being a double agent inside Salem's inner circle.
• Asshole Victim: Cinder Fall and Adam Taurus, as usual.
• Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch: When Ruby gets the chance, she sells Cinder out to secure her own place as Salem's right-hand.
  • Double points for seizing full control of Cinder's operations and alliances while keeping Cinder as her own underling.
    • Triple points for the fact that she did so while grinding Cinder's face into the ground to make a dramatic show to the others.
• Batman Gambit: Ozpin quickly cobbles together a plan to not only replace Qrow as his spy but to improve upon the situation by instilling Ruby within Salem's inner circle. He does this by gauging exactly how Salem will react to one of his students killing him; namely by seeking to take the student as her own personal disciple to destroy everything Ozpin has built, with the added satisfaction that she is using a child that Ozpin personally sought to take under his own wing. He is completely right and things go according to plan, for better or worse.
  • For all the moral ambiguity of this plan, Ozpin gets props for giving his own life for the sake of the plan, even if he is going to reincarnate.
• Becoming the Mask: The longer Ruby spends under Salem's wing, the more comfortable she becomes and the more she begins to think like one of them. The horror of this is not lost of Ruby as she is painfully aware that she is becoming one of them, and has to keep correcting her thoughts.
  • This is compounded by the fact that Ruby is developing a much more vicious and violent side, with a ruthlessness and spiteful attitude that grows as time goes on.
• Big Bad Slippage: For all that she is acting on Ozpin's behalf and intending to stop Salem's plans, Ruby can't help but fall deeper into her new villainous side.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Salem is evil. Ozpin is morally ambiguous. And Ruby is stuck between them and slipping further into darkness.
• Body Horror: The Scarab grimm. Salem 'injects' this grimm into the arms of her chosen Maidens, to both drain the Maiden powers from others and to spy on Cinder and Ruby whenever they use the Scarab.
  • Doubles as a case of Body and Host as the Scarab is a creature independent of Cinder/Ruby, although they can enter the mind of the Scarab and explore outside of their bodies for scouting purposes. This is dangerous, however, due to the severe mental drain Ruby suffers when she is stuck inside the Scarab's mind for too long.
• Break the Cutie: Ruby Rose. Repeatedly. From witnessing/causing the deaths of loved ones, to being pressed into a cold war, to being trapped with evil people, to being forced into increasingly evil actions herself.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed, but Ozpin is this to Ruby when she wryly thinks on how he played everything to perfection and used her as a perfect little pawn while binding her to his cause.

"Ruby hated Salem. She hated Salem for killing villages, for seeing her as nothing more than a tool to give Ozpin grief, for being the evil in the world that so many huntsmen and huntresses died to stop.

But in that moment of seeing Ozpin fail to protect the maidens, fail to protect the kingdoms, fail to protect Ruby, she hated him just the same." - Ruby Rose

• The Chessmaster: Ozpin, as usual. Although this particular scheme may have unforseen consequences with Ruby becoming darker and more villainous over time.
• Children Forced to Kill: Ruby has to kill Ozpin as part of his plan to insert her into Salem's inner circle, although she doesn't seem to hold much guilt for this both because it was part of Ozpin's own plan and he is not going to remain dead. Salem, however, is sending Ruby out to kill the Four Maidens and drain their power.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Tyrian is the funny man of Salem's group, but also the most bloodthirsty. With the fact that he deliberately speaks in every language but English and comes off as the resident airhead, he is truly Salem's personal Ax-Crazy Blood Knight.
• Dare to Be Badass: Ruby is assigned the mission of infiltrating Salem's inner circle and becoming her right hand while working to dismantle the organisation from within.
  • Double as Take Up My Sword as her task is essentially a much more direct version of her uncle Qrow's own mission of being a general spy and agent for Ozpin and she is given this task explicitly as his replacement.
• Dark Action Girl: Ruby, over time. As she spends long stretches of time on her mission she slowly loses her sense of right and wrong and begins to behave in a much more violent and ruthless manner, engaging in manipulation, treachery and eventually (indirect) murder, to the point that she has to rationalise everything she does.
• Deal with the Devil: The nature of Ruby's relationship with Salem. The more power Salem grants Ruby the more Ruby is bound to her and the more she is alienated from the outside world.
• Death by Mocking: Bull Faunus Adam straight up murders Yuma for the crime of making a beef joke in front of him. Although he is as shocked by what he has done as everybody else this is what shows Ruby how unstable Adam is and is what convinces her that Adam has to die. Ruby quickly realises how close she came to death when she continued making jokes about having sex with Adam's mother after he furiously told her his mother was dead.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Subverted. A panicked Ruby decides that if she accidentally calls Amber by her real name then she will claim that she was simply distracted by Cinder's beautiful amber eyes.
• The Dog Bites Back: When Ruby takes over Cinder's operations and claims her for an underling, she promises Salem that she will repay all of the abuse Cinder dealt out to her during their Training from Hell.
• Double Agent: Ruby is acting in this role, infiltrating Salem's organisation to dismantle it from within on Ozpin's orders. She does so by pretending to defect to Salem's cause after killing Ozpin. This, however, results in Ruby effectively becoming Public Enemy Number One and almost unable to walk the streets of Vale without being recognised.
• The Dragon: Ruby becomes Salem's right-hand and personal agent to hunt down the Four Maidens. However...
  • Dragon with an Agenda: Ruby is actually a double agent working for Ozpin, planning to undermine Salem's plans in the long term.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved / Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Taiyang loves his daughter and tries to convince her to come home. When this fails, he leaves a note assuring her of his safety and begging her not to trust Salem.
• Evil Mentor: Salem is this to Ruby, seeking to twist her into 'her own monster' to hunt down and kill the Four Maidens. Her motive is because Ruby killing Ozpin drew her attention to the prospect of taking one of Ozpin's handpicked students for her own weapon of destruction.
• Face–Heel Turn: As far as the public knows, Ruby did this when she went on a killing spree and murdered both her own uncle and the beloved headmaster of Beacon Academy. Her supposed motive being that she hated being treated like a child only serves to compound this sentiment.
• Fake Relationship: Ruby and Cinder enter one of these after Ruby replaces Cinder at Salem's side, with Cinder seeking to control the maiden powers indirectly through said relationship and Ruby playing along to keep Cinder's trust. Ruby is thoroughly disgusted by Cinder's advances, referring to her kisses as 'gross', and is glad that Cinder never attempted to take things further, although she had resigned herself to following through if she must.
• False Flag Operation: Ruby is assigned a task from the White Fang to rile up anti-human sentiment among the faunus by antagonising two faunus rights campaigners (a faunus and a human) and going a racist screed against faunus in a public street. While Ruby is preparing with Roman he is exasperated by her sheer inability to sound genuinely racist, and advises her on tapping into 'her inner bigot' and giving a crash-course on in-group preference. Ruby is horrified by the idea and tries to ignore the concept.
  • Ruby's attempts to antagonise the campaigners fall on deaf ears when they take pity on her being a misled child spouting weak insults. This infuriates Ruby more and more until she finally succeeds, drawing on her memories of White Fang attacks and associating all faunus with terrorists. This new screaming effort on her part draws a ton of attention and she flees once she is recognised as Ozpin's killer.
  • She repeats the feat during her time posing as a faunus while working with the White Fang in Atlas. She uses the same logic to rile up the Fang in a rage-fuelled anti-human speech to secure her alliance with them after leaving Adam to die, blaming humans for Adam's death and claiming they couldn't recover his body. It works like a charm.
• Fantastic Racism: Faunus/human relations, as usual.
  • Roman teaches Ruby how to think like a racist in order to masquerade as one during her work for the White Fang.
  • She turns it around on humans while posing as a faunus.
• Five-Man Band: Salem's inner circle forms something of an Evil Counterpart of this heroic trope.
  • The Hero: Ruby Rose, being the primary agent to hunt down the maidens
  • The Lancer: Cinder Fall, being Ruby's main foil
  • The Heart: Tyrian Callows, surprisingly, being the most loyal to Salem
  • The Big Guy: Hazel Rainart, being, well, the big guy
  • The Smart Guy: Dr. Arthur Watts, being the resident Evil Genius
    • Big Bad Ensemble: An alternate version of the above.
    • Big Bad: Salem, the Evil Overlord
    • The Dragon: Ruby Rose, The Heavy
    • The Evil Genius: Dr. Arthur Watts
    • The Brute: Hazel Rainart
    • The Dark Chick: Cinder Fall and Tyrian Callows
• Forced into Evil: From being taken advantage of and manipulated into becoming a Double Agent to taking marching orders from an Evil Overlord while the entire world thinks she went insane and launched a killing spree, Ruby has had little real option in the evil actions she has taken. The issue is that these actions are becoming increasingly natural...
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From a 15-year-old girl off attending a new school to The Dragon of an Evil Overlord with her very own Power Parasite, Ruby certainly has come a fair way. Especially since she is viewed as an Ax-Crazy Glory Hound turned Serial Killer who is easily recognised in public.
  • Salem is intent on turning her into The Dreaded.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Ruby going further down this path is emblematic of how far she is falling. From accidents and agreeing to kill a man who wants to die, to watching innocents and bystanders be slaughtered for her benefit, to choosing of her own free will to leave her allies to die, and now resolving herself to assassinate her own allies and drain their power to remain undercover, Ruby keeps finding herself in situations where the concept of death is an easier one to grasp, and the reality of killing is becoming easier to swallow.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Despite the sheer amount of cursing Ruby does in a vain attempt to sound like an adult villain, it still comes across as this trope. Roman Torchwick, suffering from second-hand embarrassment, dissuades her from doing so and Ruby reverts back to her old way of speaking - for the most part.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Salem is Queen of the Grimm and leads her core group of specialists intent on acquiring the four Relics created by the Brother Gods as personifications of their gifts to humanity for her own purposes.
• Hammy Villain, Serious Hero / Straight Man and Wise Guy: Ruby Rose and Tyrian Callows.
  • While Ruby is normally the Straight Man / Serious Hero and Tyrian is the Wise Guy / Hammy Villain, Ruby still has her silly moments and Tyrian hides his Deadpan Snarker attitude behind his deliberate language barrier.
• How We Got Here: The story's intro refuses to allow Ruby Rose to call herself a superhero and the ending of the first chapter confirms that this is the origin story of a supervillain.
• Human Weapon: Salem turns Ruby into her very own weapon against Ozpin by turning her into a Humanoid Abomination with a Power Parasite and siccing her on Ozpin's Four Maidens so that she can open the Vaults and claim the Relics for Salem.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: When Ruby joins Salem, she is quickly faced with a 'test of resolve'. She is brought before a man, bound and gagged and screaming, and ordered by Salem to kill him. Ruby tries to hype herself up to commit the murder on the one hand, desperately seeking a way out on the other... and she finds it.
  • She correctly guesses that this is a Secret Test of Character - Salem wants to determine whether she is a cold-blooded killer or a child who screwed up and is still innocent at heart. She would prefer that Ruby still be an innocent child that she can take pleasure in corrupting and morphing into her own monster, then sending her out to destroy everything Ozpin has built. Since Ruby is not, in fact, a cold-blooded killer, she gladly drops to her knees and begs to be spared, swearing her loyalty to get it.
    • The rub, of course, being that Salem is succeeding in corrupting Ruby.
• Imagined Innuendo: When Adam goes topless for his duel with Ruby to show off for the crowd, she is confused and assumes that he is trying to be seductive. She promptly lets him know that she is fifteen and is not going to remove her own top. Adam is bewildered by the assumption, then annoyed as he concludes that she is trying to throw him off his game.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Averted; Adam is pleased that his new ally is both a good fighter and ruthless enough that she is pissed when he calls the duel off early, enough that he gleefully shuts down the crowd shouting at her and tells them that she is 'perfect'.
  • He is swiftly returned to sighing and frowning her when she tells him that she still won't sleep with him.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Ruby does this to Cinder when usurping her powerbase and forcing her into being her own lieutenant.
• Leave No Witnesses: Raven, fearing that Ruby is a Maiden working for Salem and that she is aware that Raven is the Spring Maiden, launches an attack in the middle of a discussion with Ruby and Taiyang, effectively wiping out the settlement of Temeria in an attempt to hide her secret.
  • This backfires, of course, as Ruby is Salem's Maiden Hunter and Raven has just revealed that she is a Maiden. Furthermore, Raven's absolute callousness in destroying an entire settlement on a whim seriously pissed her off.

"there was basically nothing she hated more than that look on Raven's face when she'd ravaged Temeria. Human beings and Faunus were set ablaze by her own two hands for the crime of being in a normal place at an inconvenient time, and she acted like it was spring cleaning."

• The Man Behind the Man: Cinder attempts to become this after losing her chance at becoming a Maiden by trying to make Ruby fall in love with her so that Cinder could control the Maiden powers through her. This winds up becoming another tool for Ruby to use when she is selling Cinder out.
• Martyr Without a Cause: Trifa, and a common thing among the White Fang. Ruby is infuriated by their willingness to throw their lives away even when there is no need for it, to the extent that they seem to just invent a reason if they can't find one.
• Mistakenly Attacked Mole: Ruby, coming to the conclusion that Raven had abandoned Yang and Tai because she was also an agent on a mission from Ozpin, attempts to let her know that Ruby is operating on his orders and isn't really a turncoat. Raven misinterprets this as a sly admission that Ruby knows that Raven is a Maiden and is going to tell Salem, and lashes out murderously.
• Mistaken for Betrayal: Ozpin and Goodwitch do not seem to have told anyone that Ruby was operating as a double-agent, resulting in everybody believing that she has genuinely joined Salem.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Cinder's violent abuse of Ruby during their Training from Hell and later attempts to manipulate and seduce her to control her play a role in Ruby selling her out to seize control of her operations in Vale.
• The Mole: Ruby Rose is working as this after Ozpin sends her in to infiltrate Salem's inner circle.
• Morality Pet: Ilia Amitola plays this role for Ruby during her work for the White Fang. This falls apart when Ruby forces her to leave Adam to die, smacks her, repeats Adam's anti-human rant to rile up the White Fang and Ilia brings up the issue of Adam calling Ruby a human when she is presenting as a spider faunus, with Ruby lashing out at Ilia in a screaming rant. While Ilia chooses to leave the White Fang and return home to Menageria, their short-lived friendship is shattered.

"Ilia was the one person who wanted to remain alive, the one person Ruby could protect. She was supposed to be the one good deed Ruby would be able to do."

• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Ruby develops this attitude towards Raven after their encounter in Temeria, insisting that she has to be the one to kill her.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Qrow's accidental death from a misfire from Crescent Rose.
  • Doubles as a Plot-Driving Secret since Ozpin and Goodwitch kept the accident a secret and convinced Ruby to present it as a murder to show her going on an Ax-Crazy killing spree as part of her cover for infiltrating Salem's organisation.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Roman Torchwick, by his own admission. He encourages Ruby to be the same when she has to carry out her False Flag Operation for the White Fang.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The premise of the story. All-Loving Hero Ruby Rose goes undercover within Salem's inner circle and falls to darkness.
• Spree Killer: Tyrian Callows does this during an attack on a Vacuan village call Ovais. Salem orders the attack to test the Hound's ability to follow instructions, with specific commands on who to kill and spare. Ruby is horrified when Tyrian kills all those that the Hound spares, and visibly has fun doing it.
• The Resenter: Cinder becomes this to Ruby when she realises that Salem is eyeing Ruby to replace her as her Maiden Hunter. This becomes her driving motivation to control Ruby through emotional manipulation and through her gain indirect control of the Maiden powers.
• Save the Villain: Taiyang desperately tries to convince Ruby to come home, assuring her that he will help her. Ruby realises that he will help her live on the run if he has to, and he willingly fights Raven to protect her, even though he believes that she murdered Qrow on a whim over a fit of childish rage. Even when he fails, and Ruby herself attacks Taiyang during the fight, he leaves a note assuring her that he will be safe and begging her not to trust Salem.
• The Starscream: Ruby is this to Cinder, as her treacherous underling who take the chance to backstab her and seize total control over all of her operations, reducing her to just another lieutenant working under Ruby herself.
• Strength Equals Worthiness: Adam insists on physically fighting Ruby to assess her combat abilities before he will agree to work with her in Atlas. He is impressed enough to end the duel early, and even more impressed when she demands to continue fighting to the point that she will involve Tyrian to force Adam to keep fighting her.
• Token Good Teammate / Token Evil Teammate: Ruby is this for Salem and Ozpin, respectively.
• Took a Level in Badass / Took a Level in Jerkass: As Ruby becomes increasingly powerful, she becomes increasingly cruel, violent and vindictive.
• Trapped Undercover: With the Scarab grimm grafted into her arm so that Salem can kill her whenever she likes, Ruby is trapped within the organisation for the time being.
  • On top of that, Ruby shooting to the most wanted list means that escape means going on the run and hoping nobody finds her. She copes with this by hoping that Glynda will clear her name. The problem with this is that to clear Ruby's name is to reveal the shadowy cold war between Ozpin and Salem.
• The Unfettered: Ruby is on the path to becoming this as each of her moral hangups have to be abandoned to maintain her cover.
• Would Hurt a Child: From Cinder to Raven to Adam, a number of characters have already harmed or tried to kill Ruby.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Downplayed. When she sees the opportunity to betray Cinder and seize control of her connections and operations, Ruby takes it, but she does stop Salem from outright killing Cinder, electing instead to convince Salem to let Ruby take Cinder as her own minion.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Ruby's cover for infiltrating Salem's inner circle involves cutting any ties to the outside world by publicly beheading the beloved headmaster of Beacon Academy and going on the run for a double murder. This results in civilians being able to recognise Ruby on the street, and when she is recognised people scream and call for the police.