Cardin Winchester had never been a very nice person.
His own lack of friends might hint at this, but for the longest time, he hadn't even considered it to be his attitude that had caused this.
Him hoping to become a huntsman, he naturally devoted his time into getting stronger.
This strength always did come with his own confidence, which in turn became pride.
For the most part, strength was probably the biggest thing to him.
Due to this however, he, as what most guys who stereotypically had his body shape would be like, had a lacking drive in education.
In a way, deep down he knew that knowledge was a strength in its own right, and often trying to play off his own weakness, he rarely worked that hard in class.
At the same time, being mocked whenever he actually tried to play off his lacking in this area wasn't his strong suit however.
He simply couldn't stand it - that feeling that someone was, somehow, stronger than he was in anything.
So of course, he had a difficult time not being able to hold an extent of antipathy for one person in particular.
Said person was none other than Pyrrha Nikos.
Anyone who'd only heard of the things she was capable of wouldn't have qualms about saying that she was definitely one of the strongest fighters in their year.
Cardin could understand when he was outmatched by someone else in any given way.
Pyrrha's intellect was something that made his own weakness in most subjects stand in stark contrast to hers.
As though this wasn't bad enough, his whole team had recently fought a match, with all four of them fighting against her.
As it would turn out, she was much stronger than Cardin imagined.
Simply saying she'd beaten them on her own would be undermining it.
His team had gotten completely destroyed by her.
Him sitting and looking out of the window of one of his school's buildings at that moment, Cardin's expression could be found to be a scowl.
It was very threatening to his pride, not just as a fighter, but as a guy, to know that he and his teammates had all been so badly beaten by one girl.
Anyone could call him a sexist all they wanted to, he was fairly certain any other guy would feel pretty much the same way should they be put under the same circumstances.
Even if it was Pyrrha Nikos they were talking about.
Above him, Cardin could hear the sound of swords colliding, the metals crying out their immense displeasure of forcibly being struck against each other.
Sometimes Cardin would come here and hear this same thing again and again, him knowing that it had to be Pyrrha and her team leader, Jaune Arc, training with each other.
He never really cared for listening to the exercises, as he himself wasn't a swordsman of any type anyways.
After a while, he eventually heard them talking about Aura excercises, and Cardin could hear Jaune speaking about something, only for him to try dropping it entirely.
This in turn actually made Cardin curious, but as he was eavesdropping, he would feel like an idiot for trying to press the answer out of him.
Thankfully, Pyrrha did it for him.
"What is it?"
She got silence as an answer.
"Jaune, you know you can tell me." She insisted.
It seemed that Jaune relented.
"It's... Weiss."
"Oh..." Cardin could hear, even from where he was, the tinge of what could've possibly been disappointment in her voice, and he raised an eyebrow at this, listening further, "What about her?"
"I asked her to the dance. She shot me down." Jaune summed up quickly, "Big surprise, huh."
Cardin looked up at the ceiling at their voices.
Was he talking about that girl from that RWBY team?
Thinking about it quickly, Cardin found himself remembering someone.
Jaune was talking about that Schnee girl, the one with the white hair.
He could remember, every once in a while, seeing Jaune trying to talk to her, but she always spoke shortly in response, typically leaving Jaune with a downcast look on his face.
"Well," Cardin listened to Pyrrha's response, her voice somewhat shy as she spoke, something that was a rarity for her, "I believe the saying goes, "there's plenty of fish in the sea"."
"That's easy for you to say." Jaune said, voice half joking, "I bet you have plenty of guys lining up just to ask you out."
Her responding laugh seemed a bit forced to Cardin's ears, "You'd be surprised..."
"Oh please, I'll be wearing a dress to the dance if you don't get a date." Jaune said laughingly, his footsteps revealing that he was walking away from her.
Cardin realized this, and daring a fleeting look, he peeked over the edge of the roof, seeing Pyrrha now alone on the roof, her body language being almost as downcast as Jaune's when Weiss turned him down.
Pyrrha... there wasn't a chance that she actually might've liked...?
"Cardin?" His heart stopping for a second because of how much surprise he felt at hearing Jaune's voice, he slid back into the hallway through the window, finding the blonde staring at him suspiciously, "What are you doing?"
"Nothing Jaune. I just heard your little bet about Pyrrha getting a date to the dance and decided to see if you were serious or not." Cardin lied.
There was no way he'd tell him that he'd been eavesdropping (well, he pretty much already admitted to it then, but he meant the other stuff).
Jaune didn't seem entirely convinced, but he still responded with a slightly worn voice, "Yeah, if only I knew where to find one..."
He walked away, and Cardin's smug smile dropped as Jaune walked away.
He knew he couldn't make any assumptions about how that girl felt towards Jaune, Cardin thought to himself, but it really seemed to him that Pyrrha must have felt something towards him.
Not that he could just go and confront her about it though.
It was obvious Pyrrha really didn't like him, what with the looks she sent his way.
It didn't help matters much that the other girl on Jaune's team had given Pyrrha a giant high five as soon as she finished the match that had come after his team's fight with her for having beaten his team.
Not to mention the fact that he could faintly read her lips, her saying something about broken legs.
Remembering his defeat brought another scowl to his face.
He'd beat that girl fair and square someday...
The only thing that kept him from trying to fight her by himself was his promise to Jaune not to mess with his friends again after the blonde swordsman saved his life.
Since he never got a chance to return the favor, Cardin still owed Jaune his life.
He cursed under his breath.
Damn it...
There had to be some way to get back at her...
Cardin looked up at the ceiling in thought.
He couldn't do anything without Jaune eventually knowing about it...
So what could he do...
That was when the idea hit him.
But would it actually work though...?
Cardin pondered this in his mind.
He knew he had some extra reserves of dust in his dorm just in case of an emergency, especially with that Torchwick guy robbing most of it from every store in the kingdom.
Well, Cardin thought to himself, starting to walk back to his dorm room, he'd just have to wait and see.
The night after that Cardin found himself with his teammates.
Borrowing his science teacher's lab room with the excuse of trying to experiment, Cardin discussed his initial plan with his team.
"Cardin," Russel Thrush, his teammate and partner, who had a bright green mohawk amd blue eyes, spoke hesitantly after he finished explaining his idea, "I don't think this is the best idea..."
"Don't worry. If we do this right, then none of us will get into any kind of trouble." Cardin rebutted his worries, him not really telling them his actual plan but it still very liable to having positive consequences nonetheless (well, maybe "desired consequences" would be a better way to phrase it).
"But Cardin..."
"Just think of it as your way of paying me back for that time we went to Forever Fall." Cardin said, eyes reflecting a bit of bitterness at the memory he was referring to.
He never did fully get over all of his teammates abandoning him to fend for himself against the giant Ursa.
Had it not been for Jaune, he would've been definitely dead.
But...
"Actually, that goes for everyone except you." He said to the boy who seemed to have his eyes closed.
A male with a mixture of an athletic and lanky build on him, Dove Bronzewing was scowling from what Cardin could tell, but his scowl softened slightly at his words.
Him being another teammate of his, Dove was, as much as Cardin hated to admit, the best fighter in the team.
As the recording of their fight played back, Cardin could see that near the end of the fight, he'd meant to make a swing at Pyrrha with his mace, but whilst this action, he'd hit Dove himself in the face with the metal rod that connected the mace with the handle, hitting him back in his attempt to rush at the red-headed girl.
Even if he could be a bit of a dick, he did kind of feel bad for that.
"Sorry about hitting you man." Cardin apologized, Dove nodding.
"Forget it, it just means we're even now." Dove responded, though with something of a rough voice.
He had a low voice, it radiating a note of confidence within it, Dove crossing his arms.
Cardin sighed, then looked back at the people present, "We need to get to work. If we get caught, I'll take the heat. Sound fair?" He asked.
Russel and Sky hesitated, but they nodded, the latter of the two taking another few seconds to give his approval.
Cardin understood why.
Sky wasn't always the bravest person in the world.
"Thanks." Cardin said, a smirk finding its way to his face, taking the yellow dust crystals he had, "Let's start."
When the dance itself came, Cardin walked inside the ballroom while attempting to fix his tie up, scowling slightly.
He hated these formal things...
"Hey there." A girl's voice said, "Try not to scowl too much, you'll kill the mood."
Looking up when he noticed her voice coming closer, he blinked in surprise at the sight of the girl before him.
Wearing a white dress, she withheld an almost addictively optimistic glow about her, her wavy blonde hair falling below her shoulders, blue eyes soft and playful.
Her walking in front of him, Cardin blushed lightly when she leaned her head close to his chest, seeing his tie, "Wow, you really don't do this much, do you?"
His blush deepened then, it being from embarassment, but not from the typical type of embarassment he felt, which often resulted in his anger.
This time, it was different.
Being a guy, it was natural for him to feel this type of embarassment from time to time.
Especially when there was a cute girl around...
Yeah, he knew what type of embarassment he felt then.
It was a... romantic type of embarassment, if he were to ever describe how he felt then.
Reaching up his tie, she undid it completely, putting his collar up and putting the large end on the right side of his torse and the thin end on his left, fixing his tie for him.
Now that he was thinking about it, Cardin never did have much luck when it came to girls.
He'd always have this way of clamming up whenever he was near most of them.
The few girls that were an exception to this were mainly Faunus.
His own severe dislike for the Faunus was racist, he'd admitted that much to himself.
But considering the numerous times his family had had run-ins with the White Fang in the past, he didn't know whether to say he was justified in his beliefs or otherwise.
Especially considering how he'd suffered through the years...
"Done." Her voice brought him back to the present.
"Thanks..." He said, looking away from her.
"Hey," Cardin glanced back at her, her smile hiding the miniscule glimmer of anger in her gaze, "Try not to ruin everyone else's fun, alright?" She said, turning and taking his hand, leading him past a podium and pulling him into the dance floor.
He walked on wordlessly, sighing softly to himself, deciding not to question what that sudden burst of anger had come from.
He wasn't here for fun after all.
It would take Cardin a moment of thinking before he realized where it had come from. Or at least that's he thought he'd come to realize it.
The girl was named Yang if he was right, she was a member of the team that was led by her little sister, Ruby.
In the weeks following the Forest Exam, that team, named RWBY (which strangely held the homonym of the team leader's name), had become close to team JNPR, the team Jaune led.
This friendship between teams had sprouted originally from the team leaders themselves being friends, everything going on from there.
Because of that, Cardin believed, Jaune must've let it slip that he'd wanted to do something to Pyrrha.
Oh well.
At least he felt better now about not having much luck with girls this time around.
This time he didn't even have a chance to begin with.
Even as he told himself that, Cardin sighed sadly from his mental view.
He always wondered what it'd be like to have a girlfriend...
He shook off his own thoughts.
Focus, he told himself.
Walking around, Cardin was once again reminded of the reason he never attended these types of social occasions all that often.
His other weakness of not being able to dance.
He sighed to himself, looking around.
Where was that punch bowl...
As he looked for it, he found himself playing with the vial in his pocket, careful not to open it unwittingly.
He couldn't let a couple of days worth of work become ultimately meaningless after all.
At that time it was somewhere around 11:00 o'clock if he wasn't mistaken.
If he did it quickly enough, he'd be able to go back while all the teachers were away and make double check to see if everything was in the right place.
Soon finding the punch bowl, Cardin took a couple of cups, pouring the coloured liquid inside of it, the area around him not having many people.
It was probably safe to assume from how plentiful the spread of food still was that not a lot of people had arrived yet.
Hopefully all of JNPR would be coming tonight...
It was at that thought that he realized the biggest hole in his plan.
Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie shared a room with both Jaune and Pyrrha.
Nora seemed to be a pretty outgoing person, it didn't take a genius to figure that much out, but Ren on the other hand was as much of an introvert as Dove was good at fighting all on his own (which was pretty good, considering Cardin's sad little group).
If their own attendance at the dance couldn't be said for sure, then the whole plan itself really would have been null and void in usability after all.
Which would definitely suck.
He sighed, looking around the room.
He found that on the dance floor, the slightly awkward version of what Nora probably would call "ball room dancing" was in full effect, as said girl did a much less refined dance with the boy who had a head full of black hair.
He smiled in relief.
At least that loose end fixed itself.
The bigger question then, he thought, would be where Jaune and Pyrrha were...
He quickly spotted the blonde, simply walking around the expansive floor, having a somewhat bored look about him.
Cardin set down one glass on a nearby table that was empty, sitting down and setting the second one next to the first glass, taking out the vial and pouring the liquid inside of it into the glass.
Pretending that it was a simple water flavoring agent, Cardin took up a spoon and stirred the contents for good measure.
After that, Cardin got up, having dropped the spoon into a nearby bin for dirty or used utensils, and walked to Jaune, the glasses in hand.
"Hey Jaune!" Cardin called, the boy turning at the sound of his name.
"Oh... hey there Cardin." Jaune said, giving him an awkward look.
Their relationship hadn't really developed enough for them to be genuine friends, or even enough to be considered acquaintances for that matter.
But that didn't matter to Cardin then.
"Here," he handed him the glass he poured the vial into, "I wanted to thank you for what you did for me before."
Jaune looked a bit surprised at this sudden gesture, but seeing no harm in it, he took it, speaking his thanks.
"No problem," Cardin said, looking over at him, "So, you think Pyrrha might have gotten a date for this?"
"I'm willing to bet she did." Jaune said.
"Oh really?" Cardin looked at him, feigning surprise, "I thought you would've taken her. She seems interested enough to say yes."
Jaune gave a mock laugh, "Oh ha-ha."
"What? It's the truth."
"Why would she be interested in me?"
"Let me answer that question with a question: How did you end up getting accepted here when you could barely fight that well with your sword?"
Jaune scowled lightly, leaning against the same wall that Cardin was leaning against, "You have a point."
"Besides, the signs are all there." Cardin took a sip of his drink.
Jaune followed his initiative, Cardin smiling mentally.
One down...
"What signs?"
"You really mean to tell me you haven't figured it out at this point?" He looked at Jaune, who gave him a weird look back.
"No, I haven't." Jaune said, "What are you talking about?"
"I'm pretty sure Pyrrha has a thing for you." He went right out with it.
This entire conversation had never been an actual part of the initial plan, Cardin admitted to himself.
But it simply was something he used as a type of fail-safe.
Usually, people would drink something given to them, seeing it as a gift.
This was assuming, of course, whether the relationship between the giver and receiver was at least neutral, if not positive.
Since Cardin had not so recently opted out of bullying him after the victim ended up saving his life, Jaune would understandably not have even a neutral relationship with him.
There was no way of knowing if he would just throw away the drink or anything else.
So to try and reinforce Jaune's actual chances of simply drinking the glass, Cardin chose to have some small talk.
That, and he wanted to throw off suspicion.
Even now, Cardin didn't imagine that Jaune completely trusted his talking to him.
Yeah, just go and trust the racist dude who bullied and blackmailed you and tried to make you hurt your own teammate, that would make a WHOLE lot of sense, Cardin thought dryly.
Who could blame Cardin for sticking around so he could trust him?
Sure, if Jaune ever found out what he'd been planning to do right then he'd probably go out of his way to cut off some of Cardin's limbs, but that was besides the point.
Jaune smiled at that, "What makes you say that?"
It wasn't a smile of happiness.
Just a slightly forced smile mixed in with a bit of humor.
"The way she treats you, the way she seems to care about you, the fact that when you were talking about Weiss she more or less opened herself up to you..."
"What do you know about that Cardin?"
"I know enough about girls to figure out when someone feels a certain way towards you."
"Yeah right." Jaune had stopped smiling, looking away.
"It just seems that way to me. It's your choice in the end whether you believe me or not."
"If that were really the case, it might explain some things..." Jaune suddenly gained a very pensive expression.
"So you HAVE noticed the signs."
"No," Jaune waved his hand as a sign of denying his words, "It's something else..."
"What?" Now driven by genuine curiosity, Cardin looked over at Jaune in questioning.
"Since me and Pyrrha started training with each other, there have been a bunch of rumors going around that we were dating."
"Really?"
"Yeah, people were really interested in what we were doing on the roof every night. Since we agreed not to tell anyone about me sneaking into Beacon, we would just say that we would go up there to talk. Eventually, people started walking into the middle of us training, but would usually leave afterwards. The thing that I think pretty much sealed the deal about it might've been when she managed to knock me down again. I got frustrated from her constantly getting the better of me, so I played dirty and grabbed her hand and pulled her down with me." Jaune made a gripping and yanking motion with a fist for emphasis, "She fell on the ground because of that, but to make sure that she didn't get back up too quickly, I pulled her on top of me so she wouldn't get hurt by the fall, then rolled us over and pinned her down."
"How did that "seal the deal"?" Cardin questioned, while imagining Jaune having a very suggestive and dominant position over the red-head.
"It was the conversation we had afterwards."
"What did you say?"
"Pyrrha started telling that I cheated and that I shouldn't do that. Then I told her that I'd only cheated with her, and that I'd never do it to anyone else, I just did it because I wanted to be the one on top that time for once. What apparently had happened was someone saw part of what I did, and then caught all the words we said afterwards, but got the wrong idea."
Cardin laughed, muffling himself with his fist, "I can see how bad that looked. Can't get much more self-incriminating than that."
"Oh no, it gets much worse." Jaune was smiling at this point, him apparently getting a laugh out of the memory as well.
You could only laugh or cry at certain memories, the saying went.
"Pyrrha said that if I could last a round with her for long enough, then I'd "surely get the chance to be on top all I wanted," only she meant when I was fighting Grimm, and not... you know..." Jaune shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts of the words that followed in his mind's eye, "But the person watching us got the wrong idea, and then I started to brag about my sword being strong enough to always let me able to last a good while with anyone. Then I said I could probably come out on top against any of the teachers from how well she was teaching me. After she laughed, I went even further and said I'd last a while against Professor Goodwitch at the rate I was going..."
He left it hanging.
Cardin was looking at him for a moment, then started to laugh, his laughter being something he couldn't contain anymore, bent over as he cackled, "Oh my God! Oh... you..." He attempted to look him in the eye again, then bent over again, "Holy crap that is hilarious!"
"After that," Jaune spoke after Cardin calmed down enough to listen and breathe normally, "The rumors changed from us dating to being so deep in our relationship that we would have sex on the roof in the hopes of people never seeing us. Then the rumor quickly became that Pyrrha was my sex coach and I was planning on seducing all my friends and some of the female teachers."
"Oh..." Cardin breathed, "Oh-ho man... that must've sucked really badly for you Jaune. I'm sorry that happened to you man." He slapped him on his back for encouragement.
"Don't worry. At least it's better than the other rumors people made about me."
"I want to ask, but I don't want to ask at the same time."
"You'll probably get bored eventually."
"Well, it's been good talking to you anyways." Cardin walked away then, "See you around Jaune."
"See you Cardin."
He walked away, finding the punch bowl still full, the food not too much smaller in amount as compared to before.
Cardin set up a second set of glasses, soon looking around for Pyrrha now.
Where was that girl...?
He soon found her, sitting a few ways away from where Jaune was, it still being a fair distance away.
Smiling to himself, he walked to her, speaking as he came close, the liquids inside of the glasses moving with his steps, shifting itself like the wave of an ocean, "Hey Pyrrha," she looked up at him, her face, once filled with curiosity turning to a blank expression quickly.
Did he really come off as THAT much of a prick to everyone?
Keeping his face void of nothing except for friendliness, Cardin walking to her side, "I wanted to say that you gave a good fight before." He said, handing her her glass, "So as thanks, I brought you this."
Though she took it, Pyrrha still looked up at him, as he was still standing up, and with curiosity in her tone, she asked, "Thanks, but why do you feel the need to give me an award for the fight?"
"Call it friendly sportsmanship," Cardin said, with a smile, "And besides," he looked away as he remembered the recording of the fight, "It helped me realize how bad the shape of my team is, so thanks."
He didn't even try to hide the look of shame on his face.
It actually really damaged his own mental image of a leader.
First they leave him to die without even trying to look back to see if Jaune and Cardin were even following them, and then that fight happened.
His team was like a confederacy of nations.
In confederacies, nations would relate themselves with each other, often for a business or to help achieve a goal individual nations couldn't really achieve.
This chain of relations would never really grow into more than that except on special occasions, with a confederacy often shedding those relations when they were no longer needed.
CRDL, much like a confederacy, didn't have the type of relationship that was needed to sustain a suitable team for combat.
They were all a type of means to an end for each other.
And while it angered him, he knew that this was his own fault.
Besides, it was better that he lost the fight where it was safe, instead of somewhere where he under most circumstances would get killed.
"But..." Cardin looked at Pyrrha again, "Is there anything that I can do to pay you back?"
"For what?" Pyrrha asked, giving a sign of confusion.
"For helping me to realize I need to improve as a team leader."
"There's no need," Pyrrha said, waving her hand, "This is enough."
Her meaning her drink, Pyrrha started to drink it, Cardin not even trying to stop her.
With Jaune having already drunk his, he was well beyond the point of no return.
He wanted to make certain on something though...
"Hey Pyrrha," she looked at him, "By any chance are you dating Jaune? Or would you like to?" He asked, remembering his conversation with Jaune not too long ago.
"We aren't dating, and while I like him, I don't like him in that way." She said the last part while looking away.
Feeling his gaze on her face, Pyrrha looked up at him.
She was greeted by a look of skepticism.
Sitting under that gaze for a moment, she eventually caved in.
"Is it really that obvious?"
"Frankly I'm surprised he hasn't figured it out yet."
She sighed.
"Why don't you tell him?"
"What?"
"Why don't you tell him how you feel?" Cardin repeated.
"He likes someone else..."
"That isn't a reason."
"How so?"
"If he were dating, then it'd make sense. But from what I can tell, Weiss has no interest whatsoever, let alone enough to say that she's dating him."
"That doesn't mean I should..."
"Hey, I said to tell him how you feel, not propose to him." Cardin said, "There IS a difference you know."
"I know that."
"I don't think you do."
"I'm just scared of him rejecting me..."
"... No." Cardin shook his head, "You're overthinking it. I get that you don't want to be rejected. But... as his friend, do you really think he's the kind of guy to just reject someone's feelings?"
She seemed to give it some thought, albeit for half a second, and shook her head.
"See? It'll be fine."
"But... What if it ruins our friendship?"
"You're still overthinking it," Cardin deadpannned, "If you tell him, then worst case scenario will be that he gets surprised but eventually shrugs it off. Best case scenario, you have a boyfriend afterwards."
"But I'm not overthinking it." She said earnestly.
"You kind of are. Look, if you're really scared something like that will happen, then don't confess with the mindset that you're trying to get a boyfriend. Confess with the mindset of trying to be honest. You don't even have to be all cliche about it either. Just slip it into a conversation. You could even hint at it in a way, just so long as it gets the point across."
"... you seem really knowledgeable about this."
"With experience comes wisdom." Cardin shrugged.
"But still, what if it doesn't come out right?"
"It'll come to you, don't worry."
Pyrrha looked up at him, then nodded, "Thanks for the advice."
She downed the rest of her drink, then stood up, telling Cardin she'd be on the roof, walking away whilst setting her glass on a designated table.
And that conversation just might've summed up how Cardin ended up giving romantic advice to someone else.
His initial mission of getting Jaune and Pyrrha to drink the spiked punch being complete, he decided to take his leave then, passing by the dance floor before exiting out of the building itself.
As he walked back to the dorms of Beacon students, Cardin pulled a few scrolls out of his pocket, soon walking into the now empty room of team JNPR.
Setting the scrolls themselves up, Cardin made it a habit to check the time regularly.
When he was finished, the time at that point was 12:25.
He didn't have a lot of time left...
He left the bedroom afterwards, taking hurried steps.
As he reached the room he currently was living in, Cardin stopped, breathing lightly, him realizing then that his heart was beating fast.
He pushed his door open, finding the group ready.
"Is everything set?" He asked, Dove responding with a thumbs up.
"Looks like one of them is coming now." He said, seeing the many cameras revealing someone walking in.
The first to enter was Jaune, him being roughly pushed onto his bed, the one who pushed him slamming the door behind her, throwing herself on top of him, her pinning him down and roughly kissing him.
But Cardin couldn't help staring.
The girl who'd done this wasn't even Pyrrha.
And so he asked exactly what his teammates were thinking.
"Why the hell is that Ruby kid in there?"
A/N: The idea of this story came to me while I was reading other RWBY lemons and seeing how small the actual chances of said lemons happening in canonical events were, or even with it being not so OOC for the characters involved in said lemons.
You may have also noticed that I made Cardin nicer than he was portrayed in canon. This is mainly due to me not liking him being an example of a trope I call the "No good, heartless bastard," or, to put it in better context, the "Lord Frieza treatment".
What this trope basically is is when a story makes an antagonist be lacking of even slightest sign of having good traits to them. This method of storytelling is typically done so that the audience is more or less forced to hate someone, which usually ends up working.
What I don't like about this trope is that it makes the character seem much less realistic than should be, since it makes it seem the character, needless to say, is the equivalent of the devil, and even more so when the person they come in conflict with don't turn out to be an anti-hero of some type and instead make the protagonist out to be this epic embodiment of all things good like they're an angel even when they themselves are human and should really be about as morally gray as the person next to them.
